A college professor has lost her entire money from her savings bank account through debit card cloning, where the card details are stolen without the owner’s knowledge.

In her complaint to the police, S. Suganya, working with a private college, said on May 19, she had given her debit card to her husband to withdraw money from an ATM near her house at Tirupur Road.

On June 11, when she went to the same ATM for a mini statement, it showed negative balance. When she checked with her bank, she came to know that her card has been cloned. “My salary usually gets credited on first of every month. I deactivated my mobile number that was registered with the bank. So I did not receive any message when the money was withdrawn,” she said.

According to the statement received by Suganya from the bank, the withdrawals were made in Bengaluru. On June 4 at 11p.m. Rs.. 20,000 was withdrawn in two installments, and Rs. 15,000 the next day, again in two installments. An attempt to withdraw Rs. 14,000 was made on June 9. “It did not happen due to negative balance,” she said.

Cyber experts say the cloning has happened as Suganya was using an ordinary ATM card.

Prof. S. Soundarajan from Department of IT in PSG College of Technology said cloning is usually done by placing a ‘collector’ device over the ATM machine which captures an image of the magnetic strip in the card. “It also captures the PIN number when punched. This device is later collected by the offenders and duplicate cards are being printed within 2-3 hours. Recent ATM cards with electronic chips are hard to duplicate. Some ATMs also have two step authentication where our fingerprint is also matched,” he added.

A case has been registered and the Crime Branch personnel have launched an investigation.