Madurai police busted a gang involved in buying gold jewels from shops in several southern districts using fake credit cards.
A special police team arrested seven persons, including two employees of ICICI Merchant Services, and recovered 162 sovereigns of gold and equipment used to make fake credit cards and identity cards.
The police have also recovered receipts for 126 sovereigns of gold pledged with a nationalised bank.
Commissioner of Police Sanjay Mathur said that a special team started investigating after the manager of a local jewellery shop complained about unidentified persons having bought Rs. 46.76 lakh worth jewels on December 29 and 30, 2012 using fake credit cards and identity cards.
The manager was alerted by officials of ICICI Merchant Services in Chennai, as they grew suspicious on usage of local identity cards (fake PAN, EPIC and driving licenses with Madurai residential address) for the transactions made with (fake) credit cards of foreign banks.
Mr. Mathur said the police circulated the photographs of the two suspects captured through the video footage of closed-circuit television camera of the jeweller and zeroed in on Ramkumar and Rajarajeswaran of Sellur.
“These two men were unaware of the racket, but acted as told by one Anees Khan of Surveyor Colony for a commission,” the Commissioner said.
The duo had made 32 such transactions at various shops in Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Dindigul and Ramanathapuram districts. The police also arrested two employees of the ICICI Merchant Services, Marudhupandi and Sathish Kumar. “Whenever any jeweller raised any doubts on suspicious transactions made by the duo, they allegedly convinced them claiming that they were genuine transaction,” the Commissioner said. They too were benefited out of these transactions, he noted.
One, Fazil Raghuman of Sivaganga district too came into the police dragnet. It was Raghuman who had procured fake credit cards from one Suresh Kumar of Chennai and handed them over to Marudhupandi.
The police arrested Suresh Kumar, who had got blank credit cards from Malaysia.
