News

Russian banks jolted by skimming fraud

May 4, 2012

Russian Banks have experienced a shock to the system with an enormous spike in the number of skimming events through the first quarter of 2012.

According to a report in the Moscow Times, banks have registered 362 cases of skimming from Jan. 1 through March 31, compared to 40 cases during the same period last year — a nine-fold increase.

The number of incidents so far in 2012 is just 35 short of the 397 cases reported for all of 2011. 

The ATM fraud data are based on information obtained from the Russian Europay Members Association's 20 largest banks, which control approximately 90 percent of all ATMs in the country.

Some members of the banking industry attribute the skimming increase to growth in the number of ATMs in Russia — there were 184,000 as of Jan. 1, 2012, the Moscow Times said. 

For more on this topic, visit our trends/statistics research center.