The four alleged ATM thieves who were charged with scamming as much as $1 million over five years got away with their con job for so long because bank officials thought it was easier to just pay up, according to one of the investigators who helped break the case.
Harry Houck Jr., a former NYPD detective, said that in 2003 he confronted one of the accused scammers, who had filed a complaint that his PIN had been stolen and his account cleaned out.
Houck, who worked for Citibank at the time, said that accused bank grifter John Tluczek told him a wild tale of how the PIN was taken.
“He said, ‘I was planning to go on vacation, and I had a piece of paper in my car that had all my PINs written down. I just left it in my car,’ ” Houck recalled.
The former cop said that he didn’t believe Tluczek, who told him that accounts at other banks had been looted. He also called a bank where Tluczek worked and found out he wasn’t on vacation.
That bank fired the suspect, and Citibank denied Tluczek’s claim.
But Houck said that when he called other banks to ask them about Tluczek, they had also heard of him, but decided to just pay him off rather than fight.
The banks paid because Tluczek and his cohorts were taking advantage of a part of federal banking law that allows people to get money back within 10 days if their ATM cards are stolen and used to make withdrawals.