COIMBATORE: The cybercrime cell of the city police have arrested six people, who looted money from several bank accounts using information gathered by affixing a skimmer device in an ATM machine in the city. Police also seized a BMW car,
Innova,
a card cloning machine,
two laptops,
17 mobile phones and 20 ATM cards from them.
The arrested were identified as D Lavashanthan of Thilagar Street, Uthandi in Chennai, S Niranjan of Kanathur in Chennai, B Tamilarasan of Chellandi Nagar at Kattikanapalli in Krishnagiri, G Vaseem of Ramamoorthy Nagar, TC Palayam, Bengaluru, S Kishok of Anbil Nagar in Trichy and R Manoharan of Anupparpalayam in Tirupur.
Lavashanthan, a native of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka and Niranjan, a diploma holder in Computer Science, are experts in cloning ATM cards, police sources said. “It was the job of Tamilarasan and the rest of the accomplices to identify unmanned ATMs to fix the skimmers. They chose an ATM belonging to ICICI Bank located on Kamarajar Road near Singanallur. They fixed a skimmer device and a micro camera on the air conditioner to record the passwords of users,” a police officer said.
Three weeks ago, the gang retrieved data from the skimmer and the camera and cloned several cards. They left for Bengaluru and withdrew Rs 19 lakh from the accounts linked with those cards.
The cybercrime cell registered a case and formed a special team led by sub-inspector Shastha after the bank manager registered a complaint. “We collected the images of the suspects from the CCTV footage in the ATM and reached Bengaluru to nab them. But the gang managed to escape to Krishnagiri. However, the special team nabbed them from Krishnagiri on Saturday,” the officer told TOI.
“The gang was involved in similar crimes in Pudhucherry, Andhra Pradesh, Rajapalayam in Virudhunagar district, Thoothukudi and Krishnagiri,” the officer added.
Representative image