ARLINGTON, Wash. – Police are investigating a group of young people who figured out how to get a BECU ATM to doubling their deposits–tricking the machine out of more than $62,000.
If you sought to withdraw $50 you could convince the machine to make it $100. $100 would get you $200. $250 would get you $500, the machine's daily withdrawal limit.
One 17-year-old girl made off with more than $16,000. Her 18-year-old boyfriend netted around $10,000, according to police.
"There was a software problem with the machine," said Todd Pietzsch, a spokesman for the Tukwila, Wash., credit union giant. "Essentially, they figured out a way to give them double withdrawals and half of the withdrawal would be credited."
The machine has since been fixed, he told The Credit Union Journal yesterday.
Some of the crooks used personal ATM cards, while others used prepaid cards to make it harder to trace them. But trace them the police did using the withdrawal records and the surveillance video at the machine, located in the Smokey Point area of Arlington.
When confronted with the video, the 17-year-old girl confessed and identified several other perpetrators, police said.
She used the BECU machine almost 50 times, averaging about $320 each time, according to court records. Her boyfriend is accused of using two bank cards to take out about $10,000.
