Card cloning racket busted after trio’s arrest in Ayanavaram case

The accused have been identified as A Irfan (34) of Kolathur, B Allah Bakash (30) of Seven Wells and N Abdul Hathi (44) of Mangadu. The police said that Irfan is the main accused and head of the racket. He was arrested by the Puducherry police in a similar case and was released from prison recently. Apart from a number of counterfeit cards, skimmer devices, encoder and decoders, laptops and mobile phones and an Audi car, worth Rs 70 lakh, were seized from Irfan.

While the Central Crime Branch (CCB) arrested three Bulgarians who reached the city to withdraw cash from accounts of foreign nationals using counterfeit debit and credit cards two days ago, in the latest racket that has been busted, the victims are mostly local residents, said the police.

Sources at the CCB said Irfan revealed details of a few websites where hackers would upload the details of the stolen cards and the same could be downloaded on payment. “He then encodes the plain cards with the downloaded data and withdraws cash from ATMs,” said the source.

The CCB sleuths are also probing alleged network behind skimmers being fixed in city ATMs as they have already received ten complaints that money from their accounts have vanished after they withdrew cash at ATMs. They confirmed that trio were involved in fixing a skimmer at an ATM in Ayanavaram, which was detected by a user on July 16.

During the probe, the police have zeroed in on two accounts to which the money was transferred. “Irfan used a gang to fix the skimmers and withdraw cash using cloned cards. He is also part of the network with people who have PoS machines for non-existent companies. The other two accused have procured PoS machines by citing a non-existent company with banks. Irfan used the counterfeit card in their PoS machines to show that some product has been purchased. But they will take a 30 per cent commission and reimburse the remaining sum to Irfan,” said the police.

CCB is planning to instruct all bank managers to check and ensure that the ATMs under their control do not have skimmers installed regularly. A hunt has also been launched for others involved in the racket. Most of the ATMs don’t have security guards, which had made it easy for the criminals to fix skimmers in the machines, said the police.