Photo from Udon Dee. Shows an Englishman Douglas Thomas aged 71 years and his Thai girlfriend 22years old filing a complaint with Udon police.
Apparently he found his ATM account had two transactions , one for 3,500bht and the next for 20,00bht withdrawn the previous evening from a machine in the Big C shopping centre here in Udon.He stated at no time had the card been out of his possession.Police are investigating.

Would we ever find out how this crime is followed up?

I use atm's at big c a lot and unless cctv is everywhere in big c then surely the only other reason on a technical basis is the atm machine having a contraption placed over the card section that records your card and pin then it is copied and then monies withdrawn.
Hate to think of the other option of someone borrowing his card without him knowing,someone close to him literally!! withdrawing the monies.All avenues should be thought about by Mr Thomas.

All new ATM's have camera's fitted to them so it shouldn't be too hard to find out who it was, unless they're not working. I think pompui could be right about the close relative.

The only other way is if the card is a credit card with pin for atm use which can be copied if say used in restaurant/hotel etc for payment.
Strange that if someone is going to take money, they know most of our thai atm cards allow 20k withdraws at a time, so may as well ,if committing the crime, take the whole balance and live it up till caught.
Must admit on a controversial nature that their age gap of 49 years! is slightly on the high end of the ladder for relationships.

Having worked for a bank in the Uk in a past life, the more usual explanation for such phantom ATM withdrawals was, as mentioned above, a close member of the family having taken the card from where they know it is kept, along with the PIN number which has been written down (or they have previoulsy observed), making the withdrawal and then replacing the card, unbeknown to the card/accountholder.

pompui wrote:The only other way is if the card is a credit card with pin for atm use which can be copied if say used in restaurant/hotel etc for payment.
Strange that if someone is going to take money, they know most of our thai atm cards allow 20k withdraws at a time, so may as well ,if committing the crime, take the whole balance and live it up till caught.
Must admit on a controversial nature that their age gap of 49 years! is slightly on the high end of the ladder for relationships.

Maybe his 22 year old girlfriend's Thai husband took it.

Whatever the cause of the mysterious extra transaction, maybe we should take this as a warning that it can and does happen here.

valentine wrote:

Photo from Udon Dee. Shows an Englishman Douglas Thomas aged 71 years and his Thai girlfriend 22years old filing a complaint with Udon police.
Apparently he found his ATM account had two transactions , one for 3,500bht and the next for 20,00bht withdrawn the previous evening from a machine in the Big C shopping centre here in Udon.He stated at no time had the card been out of his possession.Police are investigating.

I doubt that he sleeps with it in his possession,but maybe!

I don't think it does anyone any good to speculate or to accuse anyone,no matter the age difference!

Well said, BKKSTAN. I happen to personally know 'Mr. Thomas', a golfing and drinking buddy. I asked him about what happened and was told this... the ATM receipt has a time stamp on it as well as a date. The time the withdrawals were made were mid-day and Mr. Thomas was home with his card in his pocket when it happened.

As for the 'age speculators' out there who are always so eager to point a finger, Mr. Thomas lives about 11 Km outside Udon on the Sakon Nakon Road and generally travels into town daily via his BICYCLE!! How many of you 71 year olds can say the same thing!

Sounds like a counterfeit card!They probably got his numbers sometime back when he used the card to make a purchase.
Although I have never done it,I believe you can draw money with just the card numbers and a code.I know I was standing behind a women,one time in Bangkok, that had a book full of numbers that she was putting into an ATM!

I wonder what the news worthy reason was for putting the ages of them in the report

Jealousy?

Card skimming is a crime on the rise. There are a couple of different methods, the easiest being the swiping of credit cards in a hand held skimming device (and an expert could do it in front of you and you wouldn't notice. We had a case (in Melbourne) where a waiter had a skimmer attached to his belt and in the process of walking from the table to the visa machine he would surreptitiously swipe the card whilst being in your sight the whole time) the less usual method (but still prevalent) is the skimming of ATM cards where a false panel containing a skimmer is laid over the card slot and a video recorder is linked to a transmission device and placed in an obscure place (usually dressed up like a bank brochure box or the like) Perp then sits in the back of his van, notes everyones number and collects the skimmer at a later date.

Google ATM skimming Thailand. Lots of recent instances, some quite sophisticated

Always pays to cup your hand over the ATM keypad.

(used to work in fraud dept of bank)

sounds like the first 3500B was a little test to see if it was succesful, and then the light fingered tea-leaf went for the 20K after.
if it was card skimming pro would it be likely that they would use the card locally ??

the report says "previous evening" and a first hand account from the victim of the crime says "mid-day" .... maybe the translation was a little off the mark.

i am sure if he was 75 and his wife was 55(or the other way round) the ages would still be written in to the report. Ages are put in to news reports on a daily basis, so i would'nt think to much into that one nkstan.

beer monkey wrote:
i am sure if he was 75 and his wife was 55(or the other way round) the ages would still be written in to the report. Ages are put in to news reports on a daily basis, so i would'nt think to much into that one nkstan.

Really?I do see ages put in alot of news reports in Thailand,they usually are describing the perp unless it's a tourist that is being robbed!

I think the G/F age was put in there because in there to create the exact speculation thinking that some on this board jumped on.I think it also might be the act of a predjudicial writer inferring that since there is such an age difference,she has to be in it for the money ONLY and therefore probabably the guilty party!

But you ould be right,it is just the Thai way of filling space and we should read anything into it