ATM Experience

I was just walking down the road and spotted Sumant(a friend mine ) talking to a scooter owner. It was an old navy blue scooter and Sumant was about to purchase it. I guess he bargained it for Rs. 5,000 and finalized the deal. Sumant asked me if I could lend him the money. I happily agreed and went to the ATM and withdrew Rs. 100,000. The machine delivered a tightly packed bundle of 500 notes. The bundle looked brand new and no sign of any fault. I just went back home and opened the bundle to give five thousand rupees to Sumant.
To my shock, I saw only a few legitimate notes and all others were fake notes. They were so fake that the currencies have “Fake Note” printed on them and the color is nowhere close to the legal currency. My blood pressure started increasing and I was kicking myself for the fault.. It just had 10 valid notes... I quickly handed over the valid notes to Sumant and ran over to the bank/ATM to report the issue.

The ATM was located in a mini mall. As soon as I reached the ATM, looked for any suspicious traps in ATM and I could not find any. On my mobile phone I dialed my private banking officer Seema to report the problem.. My heart-rate was high and I was gasping for breath. The voice on the phone replied "Hello Sir, tell me sir" .. I just managed to mumble a few words "Hi Seema, ATM gave me fake notes... " . I could hear Seema telling someone, "hey.. ATM is tampered..call the team". No other questions asked. There was no fuss about why I did not verify the notes at the ATM etc.. Inspite of all the tension, I couldn't help but appreciate the commitment and professionalism that Seema and the bank showed in reacting to the incident. Without asking any more questions she said that she will take care of the problem and advised the security to close all the exit doors of the mall. She asked if I could scan thru the crowd to spot any suspects. I told her that I withdrew the money 2 hours ago. She said that it is okay and asked me to try to get the doors closed. There were lots of people around, I just shouted the words "security, close the door, there is a theif inside..". Finally, all the doors were shut and I started running upstairs to see if I could spot any suspect.. When I reached the 3rd floor, I did spot one middle-aged guy who is not with the rest of the crowd and was looked tentative in his actions. He was wearing a dark purple shirt and a dhoti and did not look like a gentleman.. Within seconds, I could recall that he was there around the ATM when I withdrew the money. Without hesitating much, I shouted, "thief.. thief" . I am not sure if he thought he can not hide anymore, he started running downstairs. I have started chasing him downstairs and at the same time, calling for help from others... Just when he reached the ground floor, a couple of guards knocked him down and we captured him. The banker, Seema also reached there just in time... Upon some search, we could retrieve 4 keys from the thief each of them marked with a unique number. One of the key has a tag which matches with my account id. I did not really understand what these keys are and their relation with fake currency.. I looked as if Seema figured everything out and took me to the ATM to explain.. It was as if the fake currency was planted there before I entered the ATM. What I got was the fake currency and meanwhile, the my ATM pin was captured somehow, and using the pin, the thief made these keys, which he will use later to steal exactly the same amount from the ATM. Though I did not understand much of what she was saying, and how it was possible, I was happy that I was not at loss.

There were a lot of puzzles still unsolved... Why did I want to withdraw 1 lakh whereas I required only 5,000. How can the ATM give 100,000 in one shot? How did the packed bundle come out of ATM machine? When the bundle looked like a genuine one at the ATM, how did I discover so many fake currencies at home?

All the questions were answered in a moment as I said to myself.. "There are no rules in dreams". Have fun !!