Cash-Machine Magician

Automated bank-teller machines can be maddening devices, but there is one thing they supposedly do well: protect customers' accounts. Not always, apparently. Police are looking hard for Robert Post, 35, a Polish-born electronics expert and former ATM repairman who brags that he is something of a magician. According to the Secret Service, Post last year managed to make some $86,000 disappear from cash machines -- all from other people's bank accounts.

Post allegedly worked his legerdemain with blank white plastic cards and a small magnetic encoding machine that he bought for $1,800. By peering over customers' shoulders and retrieving their discarded banking receipts, he obtained the personal ID and bank-account numbers needed to activate the computerized tellers. Using the encoding machine, he embellished his plastic with strips of magnetic tape bearing digital codes almost identical to those on the defrauded customers' cards.

Eventually, though, a recurring flaw in Post's codes was picked up by a bank's computer. Charged with fraud, Post skipped out on $25,000 bail in Manhattan. He is still at large.