In 1997, a father and son from Fayette County had an idea: They would rip off an automated teller machine.

That is exactly what they did. They pulled a stolen, tilt-bed tow truck next to a free-standing ATM in a bank drive-up lane. They put a chain around the machine and pulled it off its moorings, leaving only some wires poking out of the ground. Then they loaded it onto the truck and drove away. Naturally, they were later caught.

Flash forward to last week when authorities in Atlanta announced that a federal grand jury had indicted four people for ripping off almost $10 million within 12 hours from ATMs worldwide.

The accused, three of whom have been identified, are from Estonia, Russia and Moldova. They are charged with breaking into computers at a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Georgia that processes payroll debit cards -- cards that allow employees to withdraw their salaries from an ATM.

They were allegedly able to raise the funding limits on certain accounts and had supplied co-conspirators around the world with 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards.

Within a 12-hour span, those "cashers" withdrew $9.4 million from 2,100 ATMs in 280 cities in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada

Obviously, with millions of ATMs around the world, these machines are the target of many criminals.

Although it is not possible to fully guard against a tow truck or computer hackers in Eastern Europe, a great many ATM crimes are aimed at the individual ATM user. And there are things you can do to protect yourself.

First, realize that a criminal does not need your PIN number and your card to steal from your bank account. If he can obtain your personal information by hacking into a store's computer system, where your information is stored when you use your debit card, or obtain your PIN some other way, cheap card burners make it easy to make counterfeit cards.

So always protect your PIN when entering it. Put your body between you and anyone who could "shoulder surf" (peek over your shoulder) to see your number while you are entering it. Or cover the keypad with your other hand.

Be especially careful in a grocery store checkout line or at a gas pump. (TechMan tries to avoid using his debit card in stores, but that's just him.)

If you approach an ATM where someone appears to be hanging around, don't use it.

Don't use a machine that has signs or an instruction screen that asks you to do something out of the ordinary, such as enter your PIN number twice. Also, use the same ATM as much as possible so you will notice any changes. Inform the bank about anything suspicious.

Never enter your PIN number on the Web as a result of an e-mail purported to be from your bank or never even click a link in such an e-mail.

In general, ATMs inside a bank or other building are safer than those on the street.

Carefully examine the slot where you insert your card. A favorite scam is this: A thief will insert a strip of X-ray film bent in half into the slot and glue the ends to the slot rim, a technique known as the Lebanese Loop. Since the film is black, it will be less noticeable against the black rim of the slot. When the film "catches" your card, you will think the machine "ate" it.

Then the thief or an accomplice will appear and helpfully tell you that if you enter your PIN at the same time he presses "cancel" and "enter," your card will be returned.

Of course it doesn't work and he steals your PIN then returns later to remove his "loop," and with it your card.

Report any card that has been "eaten" by the machine to the bank immediately.

Thieves also have been known to put fake keypads on top of the ATM keypad to capture your PIN or even construct entire fake ATM machines.

There also have been cases of putting a trap inside the money slot to capture your withdrawal. The "trap" -- along with your money -- can be retrieved as soon as you go into the bank to complain.

But don't be too paranoid because it is estimated that fewer than two-thousandths of a percent of ATM transactions worldwide are affected by fraud or crime.

But that's a lot of transactions.

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