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Europe's newly formed ATM crime investigation team starts off with a bang

May 1, 2018

Merely weeks after Germany and the Netherlands set up a Joint Investigation Team in cooperation with Europol and Eurojust, investigators scored their first big success.

A police search turned up a bundle of singed bank notes. photo courtesy Europol

In a small town close to Dortmund, Germany, two men attempted to blow up an ATM, according to a Europol press release.

Once German investigators had established the identities of the alleged perpetrators, Dutch investigators searched the men's houses, seizing gas canisters and bundles of cash. Both of the accused bombers were arrested.

Since 2015, Germany has seen a major uptick of criminal gangs coming from the Netherlands to commit ATM attacks.

North Rhine-Westphalia, the German federal state bordering the Netherlands, has been particularly affected, with more than 200 ATM attacks causing several millions of dollars worth of damage in the past 30 months, the release said.