At Least It Didn’t Swallow the Card

Cunning high-tech thieves used a fake automated teller machine to trick unsuspecting shoppers into revealing secret account information and then used the information to steal from their accounts, police said.

“We don’t believe there has ever been a case like this,” a police spokesman said.

The thieves conned the operators of a Hartford suburb shopping mall into allowing them to install the machine. People who used the fake machine inserted their bank cards, keyed in their personal identification numbers and then received a message that their transaction could not be completed. Their cards were returned, but their account numbers and passwords had been recorded by the machine.