Five members of an attention-diversion gang from Delhi and Haryana was nabbed by the city police on Tuesday. The police recovered Rs.1.50 lakh cash, mobile phones and ATM cards from them.
The accused Syed Azharuddin, Syed Arshad Ali, Intikhab Alam, Md. Shabaz Khan and Md. Abdul Quddus, who had knowledge of using internet, watched several online videos and learnt the tricks of hoodwinking customers at the ATM centres.
The gang flew down to the city and did a recce of ATM centres which have two machines. After selecting an ATM centre, two of the gang members would go inside and place a small thin silver piece next to hash (#) button of the keyboard. It would cause the hash button to remain depressed and ensured that the machine did not accept a visitor's PIN. While the victim kept trying his PIN, one of them - posing as a customer - would enter the booth and notice the customer's PIN number. Once the victim left the centre, the accused would free the stuck button and take cash. “Since the visitor had already swiped his ATM card, the data remained in the machine's temporary memory. The accused then keyed in the PIN and withdrew money ,” DCP (west) A. Venkateshwar Rao said. They had withdrawn Rs.4,32,983.
