"Super thief" Ha Tinh prying the trunk of the car to get an ATM card, guessing the password to withdraw money

On the morning of July 5, the Ky Anh District Police (Ha Tinh) said that it had issued a decision to prosecute the accused Nguyen Thanh Vinh (30 years old, residing in Ky Son commune, Ky Anh district) and Pham Thi Giang (25 years old, Cam Xuyen district, Ha Tinh) for the crime of theft of property.

According to the investigation, on June 18, Mr. Duong Van L. (52 years old, residing in Lam Hop commune, Ky Anh district) drove a red Yamaha Sirius motorbike to stop at Ba Lu hill area, in Ky Tan commune, Ky Anh district and walked up to the melaleuca garden to work.

In the afternoon of the same day, Mr. L.'s phone received a report that his personal bank account had been deducted a certain amount of money. The man immediately returned to the above location and discovered that the motorbike had been stolen by crooks, inside the trunk of the car there was a wallet containing ATM cards and many documents.

During the investigation, the police identified Nguyen Thanh Vinh and his girlfriend named Pham Thi Giang as the perpetrators of the theft. These two people confessed to taking advantage of the loophole to commit the theft of the motorbike and pawn it for 3 million VND. Both of them prying the trunk of the car to take the ATM card in the wallet and then to the automatic cash withdrawal tree, successfully guessing the card password and withdrawing 8.4 million VND from the victim's account.

The money collected, 2 subjects spent personally and bought banned substances for Vinh to use. Vinh and his girlfriend also confessed that they had committed a number of other property thefts in the area over the past time. According to the police, Nguyen Thanh Vinh has 3 criminal records for the crime of Theft of Property, 1 criminal record for the crime of Consuming property committed by others.

The incident of guessing the ATM password is not uncommon, when there have been many similar cases. Therefore, bank users need to be cautious, have high security passwords, and avoid being taken advantage of by crooks to steal assets.

In December 2023, a woman surnamed Chen in China accidentally picked up an ATM card. Momentarily curious and wanting to "try her luck", the woman decided to put the card in the ATM to "try" the password.

After several incorrect fillings, the woman discovered that on the back of the ATM card there was a 0 written on it. Feeling very strange, she speculated that the password could be 6 zeros. Thinking of doing it, the woman quickly entered the password, unexpectedly it was the password. Opening the card, it was discovered that there was about 40,000 yuan (about 135 million VND) in the card, the woman conveniently "pocketed" this money. Receiving the money falling from the sky, the woman happily left.

A similar incident happened to a man in Singapore in 2020. A man named Yap Yi San, 39 years old, went to withdraw money when he found someone's ATM card forgotten in the slot. Soon after, Yap took it out and put it in his back pocket and used his card to withdraw money before leaving.

At about 8:05 p.m. that same day, the man walked to another ATM to look for luck in the card he had "picked up". Yap tried to guess the PIN twice but was unsuccessful. On the 3rd try, luck smiled at this man when he indiscriminately pressed the number "888888".

Seeing that the victim had $18,000 in his bank account, Yap withdrew $2,000 and left because there were still many people waiting to withdraw money. He fears that if he withdraws too much money, he will be easily noticed and detected. Yap then decided to go to another ATM and withdraw another $6,000 from the account with the intention of paying off some debts. In total, this man withdrew $8,000 from the account of the person who forgot the ATM card.

The ATM card password is important information to help secure the money in the account. Users need to pay special attention to card passwords, avoid setting passwords that are easy to guess such as ID card numbers, dates of birth. Or use easy-to-guess numbers with high coincidences such as 123456 or 000000 as passwords.