ATM Maintenance Tech Broke The Bank By Forgetting To Return A Key
The Register, Monday, January 19th, 2026
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as 'Phil' who once had a job maintaining automatic teller machines (ATMs).
This story starts with routine maintenance of an ATM at a bank branch. 'I solved the issue quite easily and quickly,' Phil told us.
Banks are very serious operations so even though this job was simple, Phil had a lot of paperwork to do before his work was formally done.
'First I had to call my dispatcher, who gave me a code to list on paperwork,' he explained. Next, he had to find a bank clerk to sign off a form. In case the clerk wanted to inspect his work, Phil usually kept the keys to the branch's ATM at hand, alongside the big bunch of master keys he used to gain access to the various models he maintained.