ATM skimming: Jaipur crime branch arrests 3 Romanian nationals

JAIPUR: Three Romanian nationals living on expired tourist visas in the city withdrew over Rs 27 Lakh by cloning as many as 88 ATM cards. There racket was busted on Wednesday morning when multiple teams of Jaipur crime branch arrested them from New Delhi.
The accused have been identified as Catanescu Catalin (41) Duica Bogdan (28) and Ciobanu (44). They were arrested after the city police scanned CCTV footage of ATMs located in the Mahesh Nagar, Jyoti Nagar, Jawahar Circle and Bajaj Nahar where the gang had set-up skimming devices including a card reader and a small spy camera.

The Jaipur police suspect that the gang had been operation for past many months; their role is suspected in many other cases of ATM skimming across the country. The police said that accused had been living in other cities like Mumbai and Agra.

Jaipur police Sanjay Agarwal said all three of them had come to the city on tourists visas which expired several months ago. “They never rented a hotel, but stayed at a rented accommodation located in Triveni Nagar area of the city,” he said.

The trio wore helmets, caps and sunglasses before entering into the ATMs in order to hide their faces. “They usually went to the ATM kiosks early in the morning, they used to place a thin data recorded into the payment terminal. A small spy camera was placed right above the password keypad. The skimming devices stored the data of the users, while the gang would come back in the evening and return with their devices,” said deputy commissioner of police (Crime Branch) Vikas Pathak.

After collecting all the data, they went to New Delhi where they rented an apartment, there, the gang members appended the stolen ATM data into a microchip and cloned 88 debit cards.

“They fraudulently withdrew money from multiple ATMs in New Delhi, we have recovered Rs 50 Lakh from their room, including five cloned ATMs, one card reader, a spy camera, microchip, laptop, and four mobile sim cards,” commissioner Agarwal said.

All India trail: How the fraudsters were tracked and nabbed

The Jaipur police claimed posed themselves as tourists from western countries, wandering India for a ‘spiritual quest.”

“We scanned CCTV footage of over 100 bank ATMs in Jaipur and Delhi, including CCTVs which were located outside ATMs kiosks,” said DCP (Crime Branch) Vikas Pathak, adding that based on tactical investigation and movements of accused in CCTVs, the police contacted app based cab services which the accused had hired.

The Jaipur crime branch also took help of online hotel aggregator websites to hunt for the accused. “The cabs gave us details of pick and drop points, this enabled us to zero in on their location in Janak Puri in New Delhi,” Pathak said, adding that the police even took help of Pizza and restaurants to track them down.

"We made coordinated efforts to track the gang members, they tried to leave no trail of evidence. Hence, we carried out intensive technical surveillance and ground investigation to locate the suspects," Pathak said.