A 30-year-old man — the alleged kingpin of a gang that cloned credit cards of international bank customers and transferred the money into bank accounts of the fake companies it floated — has been arrested by the South-East district police.
The police are now looking for another accused who accessed the customers’ data. They said his arrest would ascertain how exactly the accused managed to access the data used in cloning. Interrogation of the arrested person, Arun Kumar, has revealed that it was done by hacking the websites of the banks. However, given the security measures followed by these multi-national institutions, the police did not rule out the possibility of other modes, including someone from the targeted banks being involved.
“The case was taken up on August 5 when one Sethumadhavan, the Chief Manager of Federal Bank, Nehru Place, filed a complaint of cheating committed by the owner of a company called Blue Waves Technology, with the help of cloned credit cards/debit cards in the names of various customers of the bank. These cheating incidents came to the notice of bank officials after objections were raised by the concerned customers,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East) P. Karunakaran.
The complaint added that all the cards were of their international customers.
During investigations, it was found that similar incidents were also reported in various parts of Delhi and National Capital Region and that Blue Waves Technology had shifted their office from Kalkaji to an unknown place. A trap was laid with the help of Federal Bank and Arun was arrested on August 7. The police will keep him under custody till Wednesday.
“The details of transaction were analysed and the arrested person was interrogated. It was found that they swiped the fake cards on the POS machines already obtained by them by opening the bank accounts of fake companies. As soon as they received money in their accounts, they would immediately withdraw it. Then they would float a new company and target another set of customers of some other bank. In this manner, they had floated around seven to eight companies in the last one year,” said Mr. Karunakaran.
Arun said he along with his relatives Jitender, Vikas and Sanjeev had come into contact with one Yasin through a common friend. “Yasin and Jitender have very good knowledge of computers. They are all masters in hacking and stealing data,” said Mr. Karunakaran.
