A law student from Chennai and his associate from Hyderabad, who allegedly cloned credit cards after purchasing hacked data of bank cards online, were arrested by the Cyberabad police on Monday.
Uday Kumar (37) of Chennai was familiar with computer programming software and networking.
He began purchasing electronic code data of various bank cards -- credit and debit -- which was sold online through some websites.
Cloned cards“Using a bank card writer, he would paste the electronic code data (which is in the form of a magnetic strip) on a blank card. Thus, a cloned credit or debit card is created,” Special Operations Team Officer-on-Special Duty K. Goverdhan Reddy said.
Then, the accused would go to different cities in the country and approach locals to use those cloned bank cards offering them some money.
Kumar and his associates would go to a shop and convince its owner with a concocted story that one of their friends had flown in from abroad and urgently required money.
Commission“We will not buy any article from your shop but swipe his card for some amount. Keep 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the amount as your commission and return the remaining cash to us,” they would tell the traders and take the money. A fortnight ago, he arrived in the city and hired K. Kranti of Hyderabad to use the cloned cards here.
Within 10 days, he pocketed nearly Rs. 5 lakh in this fashion, the OSD said. Since the accused admitted that he had been cloning bank cards for nearly past two years, the police suspect he could have made huge money adopting his modus operandi.
