There was a case a few years ago in Australia where someone realized that their (foreign-issued) card would always authorize, but that the debit would never hit their account.
They had a field day (or months). Police estimated that the person had withdrawn up to $2M from ATMs.
But people are greedy - faced with a machine that effectively gave free cash, as much as desired - how was this person caught? A gambling spree (go figure - where's the real allure in "winning" when you can "win" at any ATM?) - on a losing streak, he couldn't be bothered to spread his withdrawals amongst multiple ATMs at or around the casino, and in one night emptied an ATM (approximately $100,000), which tipped off the bank, that had only filled it that morning. Some cross referencing, and it was all over.
Scarily, the bank noted that until then, there was "nothing that had been flagged in their system" alerting to a problem with this person/account.
They had a field day (or months). Police estimated that the person had withdrawn up to $2M from ATMs.
But people are greedy - faced with a machine that effectively gave free cash, as much as desired - how was this person caught? A gambling spree (go figure - where's the real allure in "winning" when you can "win" at any ATM?) - on a losing streak, he couldn't be bothered to spread his withdrawals amongst multiple ATMs at or around the casino, and in one night emptied an ATM (approximately $100,000), which tipped off the bank, that had only filled it that morning. Some cross referencing, and it was all over.
Scarily, the bank noted that until then, there was "nothing that had been flagged in their system" alerting to a problem with this person/account.