At 4am today, apparently, there was an explosion as thieves blew up a cash machine at BLKB.
This is a real menace in Switzerland these last few years and what is very sad is then the banks don’t replace the machines in many cases.
Here in the news about 30 such cases
My guess is that the banks have no other alternative than to close the locations - insurance premiums are probably through the roof.
And besides, if you had an apartment above an ATM, would you still sleep well, literally sleeping on a time-bomb?
For some reason, it's always ATMs that are on the street.
Fortunately, there are banks that don't want customers to operate the machines under then rain on in the cold and place them inside the comfort of a building. These ATMs somehow are not robbed that frequently.
The robbers' next task is to find shops etc that actually take cash.
This is not quite true, just from the top of my head: one of the latest ATM in BL was actually inside the bank. Another insane one I remember was on premises of SBB.
It's more a question of accessibility.
Often, locations near the border are preferred, as national borders often thwart pursuits. Autobahn-connections help quick escapes.
And then, the location of the ATM itself. Gotta be able to place the explosives so that they blow up the ATM but the money survives ;-)
One can probably build ATMs with a higher resistance-class - but that would very likely only lead to larger explosive charges by criminal, and higher collateral damages.
In any case, customers who want to draw cash will lose.
I am surprised that it doesnt happen much more frequently... when I was living in Luxembourg did this happen every other week to the point that the retail banks closed all ATMs on the street. Robbers pick places with national borders nearby, so they do a runner while the cops still need to coordinate, often with language and bureaucratic borders in place. Its not some drunk dudes but networks of organized crime.
Swiss ATMs seem to stock a lot more cash than others - my local SZKB one has even 1k notes!
Who needs explosives? The UK/Ireland standard is removing them with a stolen construction machine.
haha, on the top of my head I also remember the pics along all articles about ATM robbery as machines on the building facades. Maybe some stats are needed.
Well for ome Switzerland has a hot pursuit agreement with France. No diplomatic measures required.
So does Luxembourg. But there wont be any hot pursuit if somebody blows up an ATM at night... if you do so close to Basel could you be in CH, DE or FR by the time the cops arrive at the scene and potentially hear a witness out. By the time the border checkpoints get a description for a car to look out for... are you gone for an hour or two. If you did this in central Switzerland are your chances to hide a lot worse...
Probably within the bank premises there are more and better cameras, then the thieves have to upgrade their disguises.
There was a gym nearby that had an ATM on an outside wall, after the ATM was blown up the gym was closed for weeks.
Well, at some point ATMs could become "uninsurable".
I always thought that these machines were so designed that, in an "emergency situation", the bank notes were stained with a dye. That is, any explosive force would release a dye. This at least ensured that the further use of the bank notes was more difficult. Maybe this is no longer the case ?
Well, this fool-proof solution only resulted in the design of better fools.
I’m not sure what you mean by that but here are some links:
https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics…stained-notes/
It was dark. Maybe the thieves didn't notice.
Why don't they design ATMs such that the notes are stored elsewhere?
Tom
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