2009 video of ATM mugging in Karachi viral on social media

Claim: CCTV footage shows a recent mugging at an ATM in Karachi.

Fact: The CCTV footage is old and can be found online as early as April 2009. The video does not show a recent mugging at an ATM in Karachi.

On 2 February 2023, Facebook user ‘Haris Gulzar’ posted a video (archive) showing what appears to be closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage of a recent mugging at an automated teller machine (ATM) in Karachi.

The video is accompanied by the following caption:

“کیا تم جانتے ہو ایسے بے بس کا دکھ جو اپنے بہن بھائیوں اور والدین کا واحد سہارا ہو اور اس کی تنخواہ دن دہاڑے لے اڑیں؟ نہیں تم نہیں جانتے!!! تم نہیں جانتے!!! 💔😭
[Do you know the pain of a helpless person who is the only support of his siblings and parents and takes his salary day by day? No you don’t know!!! You do not know!!! 💔😭”

Two hashtags — #karachi and #snatching — have been added to the captions of most of the Facebook posts containing the video.

Fact or Fiction?

Soch Fact Check found with the use of reverse image search tools that the video is not recent but from more than a decade ago.

Our inputs included keyframes from the video, helping the search engines identify even the pages that contain stills from the footage from years ago, such as blog posts published on 24 June 2009, 10 October 2009, 16 June 2009, 15 November 2009, and 18 November 2009.

The video was uploaded on Facebook numerous times on 8 April 2009, 19 May 2009, 6 July 2009, 31 Aug 2009, 8 Sep 2009, and 12 Sep 2009. We also found it on the Dutch online video and image-sharing platform, Dumpert, where it was posted on 27 May 2009.

Soch Fact Check found the earliest appearance of the viral ATM robbery video on 4 April 2009 on YouTube.

Virality

Soch Fact Check found the most viewed posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, with over 133,000, 119,000, 104,000, 74,000, 50,000, 25,000, 18,000, 16,000, 13,000, 12,000, 12,000, 11,000, and 11,000 views, respectively.

On Twitter, the most popular tweet was this one, which was watched more than 81,000 times, retweeted close to 250 times, and received upwards of 500 likes; the video in it gained 296,000 views. Other posts can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The video was uploaded here and here on YouTube, with the latter being by the Government of Sindh, which appears to have posted the correct clip with the wrong caption. It was also shared here on Instagram by user @hyderabad_sindh, gaining over 5,000 views.

Conclusion: The CCTV footage does not show a recent mugging at an ATM in Karachi. It can be found online as early as April 2009.

Background image in cover photo: Jake Allen