Last April, Catherine (not her real name) discovered that her account had been raided when she tried to get money from an ATM.
She had just been paid and knew that there should be around €2,000 in her account. A phone call to her 24-hour banking service revealed that the account had been cleared out by someone using an ATM on O'Connell Street, taking the maximum amount of €700 on each of the previous three days. At her branch she got little satisfaction as the bank official seemed mystified as to how the money had been taken when she still had her ATM card. She contacted Store Street Garda station where the detective, having ascertained that she had last withdrawn money from an in-shop ATM at a petrol station in Inchicore, told her that it was most likely that the ATM machine had been tampered with and the skimmers were parked in a car on the forecourt. She contacted head office and the money was reinstated into her account by the end of the week. She had no follow up from either the bank or the Garda.