House bill wants ATM skimmers jailed for life, fined up to P5 million

Mara Cepeda

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House bill wants ATM skimmers jailed for life, fined up to P5 million
The bill seeks to declare ATM skimming as a 'crime of economic sabotage'

MANILA, Philippines – A House bill seeks to penalize the skimming of at least 50 automated teller machine (ATM) cards with life imprisonment as well as a fine ranging from P1 million to P5 million.

House Bill (HB) Number 5934 was filed on Tuesday, July 4, by Eastern Samar Representative Ben Evardone, the chairperson of the House committee on banks and financial intermediaries.

He filed the bill two weeks after the committee probed the skimming incidents of several ATMs of BDO Unibank as well as the glitch in the system of the Bank of the Philippine Islands. (READ: BDO chief likens fight vs ATM skimming to running on treadmill)

The measure seeks to declare as a “crime of economic sabotage” the following:

  • Skimming of at least 50 ATM cards
  • Bank system hacking
  • Unauthorized access to at least 50 bank applications and accounts

In his bill, Evardone defined skimming as “a type of fraud which occurs when an ATM is compromised by a skimming device, a card reader which can be disguised to look like a part of the ATM and which saves the users’ card number and pin code.”

“With the fast advancement of technology came a new way of stealing one’s money. Criminals and criminal syndicates were able to illegally access the various electronic medium of transactions and they were able to unlawfully appropriate to themselves the hard-earned money of others,” Evardone said in his explanatory note for HB 5934.

The measure also seeks to increase the other penalties stated under Republic Act (RA) Number 8484 or the Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998. This law lays out the rules protecting consumers in commercial transactions that make use of access devices like credit cards. 

ATM skimming, however, is not part of RA 8484. – with reports from Sofia Tomacruz / Rappler.com

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Mara Cepeda

Mara Cepeda specializes in stories about politics and local governance. She covers the Office of the Vice President, the Senate, and the Philippine opposition. She is a 2021 fellow of the Asia Journalism Fellowship and the Reham al-Farra Memorial Journalism Fellowship of the UN. Got tips? Email her at mara.cepeda@rappler.com or tweet @maracepeda.