Ever wanted to know exactly how organised crime gangs and conmen manage to fleece people by accessing their banks accounts via an ATM?

The British BBC 3 television series, The Real Hustle, has gone so far as actually re-enacting one particular data-capturing strategy commonly used by crime syndicates.

The Real Hustle has been running on the BBC since early 2006 and demonstrates a wide variety of confidence tricks and scams performed on members of the public by its presenters, Alexis Conran, Paul Wilson and Jessica-Jane Clement.

The show highlights ways in which money can be extracted, with a view to educating the viewer in how to avoid becoming a victim.

The ‘marks’, as the victims are labelled, are always informed of the scams straight after being fleeced and repaid any money they’d lost.

burningpants decided to delve a little deeper and see, in terms of ATM fraud, what other strategies were commonly used to rip people off?

It turns out there a re several common strategies criminals use.

The include the Lebanese loop, distraction, card jamming, card swapping, diversions, website spoofing or “phishing”, false ATM presenter, fraud using a stolen sard, ATM burglary and a variety of customer PIN Stealing Methods.

The first of the above methods, for instance, the ‘Lebanese loop’ is the term applied to any number of devices used to carry out ATM fraud by retaining the victim’s card.

In their most elementary form, a Lebanese loop, consists of a strip or sleeve of metal or plastic (even something as simple as a strip of video cassette tape) inserted into an ATM’s card slot.

When somebody inserts their ATM card, the loop prevents the card from being drawn into the machine, fooling the user into believing the machine has malfunctioned and captured their card.

The criminals obtain the victim’s PIN either by watching them enter it the first time (shoulder surfing), or by approaching the victim under the pretence of offering help and suggesting they re-enter their PIN (and again, watching them do so).

Once the victim has left the ATM, the criminal retrieves the loop and the trapped card, and uses it, along with their PIN, to withdraw cash from the victim’s account.