Rat Slips Into Bank, Chews Over $18,000 Cash Inside ATM

A rat with expensive taste may have been responsible for damaged currency after a dead rodent was reportedly found in a pile of chewed up money inside an ATM in India.

Technicians responding to a call on June 11 to fix a broken ATM at the State Bank of India in the town of Tinsukia in Assam discovered a dead rat inside the machine alongside a pile of shredded Indian rupee notes, a State Bank of India (SBI) official told Reuters on Thursday.

Bank officials thought the machine was "out of order" since May 20 after patrons complained it stopped producing money.

"The ATM was out of order for a few days and when our technicians opened the kiosk we were shocked to find shredded notes and a dead rat," said SBI branch manager Chandan Sharma.

Multiple reports have the destroyed bank notes at an estimated worth between 1.2 and 1.3 million rupees ($17,662 to $19,000 USD). The notes consisted of 500-rupee and 2,000-rupee denominations, ABC News reported.

Authorities believe the rodent entered the machine through a tiny hole near the ATM's wiring, police superintendent Mugdhajyoti Dev Mahanta said, according to the Guardian.

"We've checked and there is no other criminal or conspiracy angle to the incident. It looks like the rats entered the machine through a small opening for some wires," he said.

SBI owns more than 50,000 ATMs in India, according to Reuters. Many of those machines carry a closed-circuit camera for security purposes. However, police did not find footage of a rat entering a machine after inspecting the surveillance camera, Sharma told Reuters.

Out of the 2.9 million rupees ($42,685) in the ATM, about 1.7 million rupees ($25,022) were undamaged and recovered from the machine. Meanwhile, authorities have launched a full investigation into the incident and look to prevent it from happening again.