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For the second time in as many weeks, Sweden's entire fleet of automatic cash machines broke down on Thursday. The country's ATMs stopped working in the early afternoon and were down for an hour. "It's a central fault," Johan Nilsson, spokesperson at Bankomat AB, told the TT news agency. "It's deeply regrettable... we were only out of action for an hour or so but our goal, of course, it to always have cash available for our customers." When the same thing happened late last month, Nilsson dismissed any notion of a hacker attack being behind the system's failure. Thursday's incident...

SOUTH PORTLAND (WGME) -- It's something we've all imagined at one time or another, going to an ATM and having the machine mistakenly spit out thousands of dollars. Never happens, right? Guess what? It did happen at a bank ATM in South Portland early Thursday morning. This all started at one in the morning, when officers were called to a TD Bank branch on Maine Mall road. A transient was inside the bank sleeping beside the ATM. Officers went inside and moved him along. But, he came back.

An Australian company says it has produced one of bitcoin’s holy grails: a cashless ATM that allows users to buy bitcoins using a credit card, and sell bitcoins via a direct deposit to their bank account. The first fully functional Diamond Circle ATM arrived from its manufacturer in Brisbane this week. Unlike competing ATMs and vending machines that rely on QR codes and cash, Diamond Circle’s solution is based on near-field communication (NFC) technology with paper receipt backups. This unique approach is the brainchild of CEO Stephen Rowlison, a seasoned FinTech (financial technology) entrepreneur with 30 years of IT experience...

In a recently completed study from Texas A&M University, President Barack Obama has been rated as the 5th best in history. “After only 5 years in office, Americans have rated President Obama the 5th best in history.”Here are the Results: 1) Reagan and Lincoln tied for first 2) Seventeen presidents tied for second 3)Twenty-three other presidents tied for third 4) Jimmy Carty came in 4th 5) Obama was fifth Heh. gig'em!

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)DENVER — Colorado welfare recipients are using ATMs located inside marijuana retail shops to withdraw cash. The money was given to them by taxpayers to help their families survive, but an exclusive Fox31 Denver investigation found some cash benefits most likely going toward marijuana purchases. FOX31 Denver asked the Colorado Department of Human Services for its “Quest card” database of Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cash transactions for the month of January, 2014. That is the first month in which Colorado marijuana dispensaries were regulated and open for recreational sales. The FOX31 Denver investigative team matched the addresses of EBT cash...

Though they missed becoming the first operational bitcoin ATM in the US by less than 24 hours, the entrepreneurs behind Liberty Teller caused quite a stir when they revealed that they would boot up their new Lamassu machine in Boston’s busy South Station on 19th February.

New York Police officers arrested four men Tuesday night on suspicion of having a connection to drugs. Police acted after receiving a tip that the four had sold heroin to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was found dead from an overdose of the drug on February 2. Drug dealers are far from my favorite people, and the arrests are welcome, but no drug dealer killed Philip Hoffman. Only one person is, ultimately, responsible for his death: Philip Seymour Hoffman, himself. Mr. Hoffman was the one who procured the drug, injected the drug and kept injecting the drug. Mr. Hoffman was...

Three cities in Canada are set to have bitcoin ATMs installed in the coming weeks, making the country the top ATM location in the world. New ATMs will be installed in the Canadian capital city Ottawa as well as Montreal and financial hub Toronto. The ATM operators are announcing their plans to install machines across the country even as Canada’s central bank issued a statement yesterday declaring bitcoin is not recognised as legal tender there.

Nearly all of the ATMs in the world are running the Windows XP operating system, introduced by Microsoft 13 years ago—and incredibly out of date, as any tech enthusiast will tell you. On April 8, Microsoft will officially end the tech support for the aging OS, which was replaced by Windows Vista in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009, Windows 8 in 2012 and Windows 8.1 in 2013. […] If an ATM isn’t upgraded, it will continue to function, experts said. Withdrawals, deposits, and other transactions will work as they did before. But the machines will be more vulnerable to cyber...

Bitcoin ATMs are coming to the city. Josh Harvey, co-founder of Lamassu, showed off the first bitcoin dispenser at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show and has found quite a bit of interest for the $5,000 machines. The machine, designed and manufactured in Portugal, looks like a typical deli ATM — but functions more like a vending machine. You put in US dollars and receive bitcoins back on your phone.

If you like your PIN you can keep your PIN...and so will he...

Are U.S. federal government policy makers planning for an economic meltdown? Fiscal and financial news isn’t a particularly sexy topic for broad audiences, even under normal circumstances. And over the Thanksgiving national holiday weekend, about the only news people care to consume are football scores. But as we enjoyed turkey dinners, shopping, and hopefully some quality time with friends and family – and even in the recent days leading up to the holiday weekend – some major policy ideas and changes have emerged that could keep you away from your personal finances in the face of another meltdown. Americans...

Sporting a brace on his left knee, Mariota turned in his worst performance of the season in Oregon's loss to Stanford, its first of the year. He finished with negative rushing yards for the first time this season and could not get the Ducks on the scoreboard until the fourth quarter, when he threw two touchdowns. The comeback effort fell short after Oregon could not recover a second onside kick.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Texas A&M's move to the Southeastern Conference was something school president R. Bowen Loftin called a "100-year decision" when it occurred. Turns out it was one of several factors that helped contribute to hundreds of millions in increased donations for the school. The university raised more than $740 million in donations in the past fiscal year, the school announced on Tuesday. The total, documented between Sept. 1, 2012, and Aug. 31, 2013, is a school record and more than $300 million better than any previous 12-month period in the school's history. Scott Halleran/Getty ImagesTexas A&M has...

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

A worldwide gang of criminals stole $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said Thursday — and outmoded U.S. card technology may be partly to blame. Seven people are under arrest in the U.S. in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world, working in cells including one in...

Coming soon to a bank near you...

Wealthy Russians stand to lose billions of euros in Cypriot banks under draconian terms being hammered out on Sunday night in Brussels to prevent the Mediterranean tax haven becoming the first country forced out of the single currency. Negotiations got underway amid a hardening of the stance held by the International Monetary Fund and Germany, who insisted that depositors must take the hit for bailing out the eurozone's latest crisis economy. There were signs of panic in Cyprus as a €100 (£85) limit was imposed on ATM withdrawals, with more stringent capital controls to follow if a deal is reached....

Last week's post on the pistol-packing ways of some credit union members, and their bad attitude toward robbers, led some credit union officials and attorneys to keep an eye out for similar incidents. In what cannot be a mere coincidence, a well-known credit union attorney put me on to another take-down, this one in Michigan. Would-be robbers picked the wrong person in Redford Saturday Night. Redford police say a 31-year-old Redford resident had just withdrawn money from an ATM at Community Choice Credit Union, 25447 Five Mile, when he was approached by two people who demanded he hand over his...