The Gudiyatham police have arrested three persons on charge of stealing lakhs of rupees from customers at a petrol bunk in Gudiyatham in Vellore district by skimming their debit/credit cards.
Nishadh from Kerala, Amarnath, a petrol bunk employee, and Satish were arrested and remanded in judicial custody.
Nishad got the skimmer from Saudi Arabia and gave it to Satish and Amarnath, who worked in the petrol bunk. “When a customer gave the debit/credit card to make payment for the fuel, they took it into the office and swiped it in the skimmer and brought the POS machine out and swiped again in front of the customer,” said a police officer.
When the customer keyed in the PIN, they made a note of it and scribble it on the merchant copy of the bill. “Once in a few days, Satish used to upload the data in a computer and then using a reader they activated the dummy credit/debit card. Using the PIN, they used to withdraw money,” the officer added. They had been doing this for over a year.
The gang was busted by Gudiyatham inspector M. T. Irudayaraj after a customer lodged a police complaint that over a lakh was taken away from her bank account. “A few days ago, Vasumathi swiped her card at the petrol bunk at the railway station petrol bunk in Gudiyatham. The same night someone swiped over ₹1 lakh from her account. In the next few days we received similar complaints from customers of the bunk,” said a police officer. The police monitored the petrol bunk and identified the employees who were on duty when the card was swiped. “We finally zeroed in on Amarnath and Satish and also Nishad,” added the officer.
The police have warned customers not to hand over their cards to strangers.