Debit card glitch costs New York City $17M in less than 3 days

(NewsNation) — Fraudsters siphoned $17 cardinal implicit 3 days from ATMs successful New York City aft discovering a glitch successful debit cards fixed to employees of a summertime younker program.

The incidental targeted the astir 100,000 teens and young adults participating successful the NYC Summer Youth Employment Program, according to the New York Times, which archetypal broke the story.

The historically palmy summertime programme helps New Yorkers, ages 14 to 24, with fiscal literacy and summertime occupation opportunities.

Due to a strategy glitch, debit cards connected to summertime workers' biweekly paychecks allowed ATM users to retreat an unlimited magnitude of cash, careless of their relationship balance.

Within hours, the hack was shared connected societal media and dispersed rapidly. Some workers were motivated to merchantability their cards, metropolis officials said, allowing scammers to drain their accounts and sinking immoderate into thousands of dollars of debt.

The New York Times reported the incidental outgo the metropolis $17 cardinal successful little than 3 days.

"We are profoundly disturbed by scammers preying connected our participants conscionable arsenic they started their enactment assignments to enactment themselves and their families," a spokesperson for the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development told NewsNation.

The section launched an probe with the vendors who oversee the wage paper strategy "to marque definite our participants' net are arsenic unafraid arsenic possible," the bureau said.

Most ATMs person a regular withdrawal limit, but successful this case, determination was nary bounds owed to the glitch.

Officials said the cards were utilized astatine the aforesaid ATMs hr aft hour. A azygous ATM had $43,000 withdrawn, presumably by 1 person.

Police don't cognize each of the ATM locations targeted, and they are inactive moving to place who is responsible.