Its sad that these scams are so widespread today that a heavy handed approach like this is necessary. Unfortunately doing these attacks is incredibly cheap :(
The final solution was disabling the ATM network durimg night, except the ones located in safe places. Showing you are drawing money in a hurry in a lone hut in the night was a bad idea, anyways.
Why did they visit multiple ATMs?
Unfortunately, whenever governments try to solve the wrench attack, they do so by removing the end user's control over their own stuff.
To be honest, in my country I can also transfer all my liquid money (not countings stocks etc) with just my phone. The difference is that i'm not afraid of being kidnapped (it's safe here). And anyway, how much does normal person hold in the cash account? People living month-to-month don't have much anyway, while people with savings usually keep them in stocks/bonds/etc.
It’s also a different kind of enemy. The biggest crime organization in Brazil has switched their primary focus from drug running to financial scams. They invest millions and set up legitimate companies with hundreds of employees to facilitate these schemes.
They can certainly try. I’ve had a handful of legit fraud instances on my accounts, banks detecting before I do has been close to a coin flip. On the other hand, I’ve had at least an order of magnitude more false positive detections of fraud.
1. Banks need to own the risk, not the customer 2. Banks need to spend to defend 3. Laws need to make organized fraud catastrophically criminal.
There is a reason Singapore does not have this problem.
> It hit a record high last year, with $190.9 million stolen in such scams, more than five times the $36.9 million lost in 2019.
Can't find more recent concrete figures in a minute or two but their police are busting balls through international collaboration in 2025 so they must have a big problem still: https://therecord.media/asia-scam-center-takedowns-singapore...
I've seen bank defending people before with my own eyes. I was at a local branch doing some business and there was an old lady wanting to withdraw something like $50k to "pay a mortgage" or something, it was obvious she was scammed, the bank blocked her transaction and the teller was explaining to her she was scammed, and the old lady was shouting at the teller saying it was her money and they had no right to stop her. That's the thing, a lot of scam victims really don't believe they're scam victims until it's too late, and "it's their money, the bank has no right to stop them".