Even after two ATM robberies in a week, one in Winterthur on Monday night and one in Egliswil on Tuesday, police in Switzerland are still unsure who is to blame for a string of more than 40 ATM robberies reported since the start of this year. Monday night’s target was an ATM inside a shopping centre in Winterthur-Töss, while Tuesday night's target was a free-standing ATM in the street, according to police in each canton.
The authorities say that cases of ATM robbery have been on the rise since 2019, further shown by the more than 40 ATMs that have been blown up or robbed since the start of the year. The police in Canton Zurich said that they were not able to ascertain how much money was taken at the robbery on October 10 and urged any witnesses to come forward with information as soon as possible.
The police told SRF that the criminals broke into the shopping centre where the ATM was, before blowing up the machine in order to take the cash stored inside. At around 2am, a call came into the emergency services regarding smoke coming from the shopping centre. Police later found out that the ATM thieves were responsible for the smoke.
Thankfully, since the shopping centre was closed at the time no customers were injured, but the building itself suffered considerable damage from the explosion. The authorities are still on the hunt for the criminals behind this and other attacks on ATMs across numerous Swiss cities.
This was compounded by events on Tuesday night at around 2.30am, when a loud bang was heard in the small town of Egliswil, Canton Aargau. The police arrived to discover that another ATM had been blown up. Authorities said the perpetrators fled into the forest and were able to make good their escape.
According to the federal police, many of the perpetrators of these crimes use fake or no licence plates on their cars in order to drive from location to location without being detected by the police. One of the reasons police think that criminals could be targeting larger Swiss banks is so that they can commit crimes across cantonal or international borders, making them less likely to be caught by local or cantonal police forces.