Culprits used skimmers to steal data from ATMs

HYDERABAD: Nigerian gangs duping people through online frauds is passe. Now, Romanians are on the prowl, siphoning off money from bank accounts by cloning debit cards.
After receiving complaints from 45 people about money being fraudulently withdrawn from their bank accounts using debit cards in Mumbai, Cyberabad police went to four ATM kiosks in Malad and Goregaon, where cash was withdrawn, and the two ATM centres in Kukatpally, where the complainants went to withdraw cash , and scanned the CCTV footage.



In the footage, police saw foreigners, wearing caps or covering their faces, attaching skimmers to card slots to scan details of debit card when a customer swipes and fixing secret cameras to the machine dome above the key panel to record PIN number. The CCTVs also captured foreigners withdrawing cash between 11pm and 1am using the cloned cards to exploit daily cash withdrawal limit.

Police then checked with their counterparts of other states and discovered that Romanian gangs were indulging in debit card cloning and gathered details of Romanians visiting India during the particular period. Police also kept a watch on the Romanians visiting the particular ATM centres in Malad and Goregaon and caught one of the offenders when he came to withdraw cash. Based on the information given by him, another offender was caught from a guest house in Mumbai along with cash, cloned cards and other incriminating evidence.

On interrogation, the duo confessed that Romanian and Bulgarian gangs had been resorting to debit card cloning frauds in India. The gang members travel in autos to zero in on ATMs in metros. They select kiosks without security. A gang member installs a skimmer, while the second one uninstalls it within a day. Another member clones the cards using data gathered in skimmer and video recorder, while the fourth member withdraws cash from ATMs. They confessed to have purchased the gadgets from an emarketing portal.