The police have busted a fake credit card racket and arrested a gang of 14 in this connection.
The police named the kingpin as Jayakumar, (44), a resident of Binny Mills area, who used to create fake identity cards of his associates to get them credit cards from MNC banks. Using these cards, the accused made purchases in showrooms and malls before selling the goods at other shops cheap.
The merchandise purchased through these credit cards included gold jewellery, branded clothes, footwear, expensive watches and mobile phones.
Jayakumar was earlier arrested by the police for a similar offence but came out on bail. The gang used to make purchases during weekends to avoid undue attention during the heavy rush and swiped the cards before trashing them for fresh ones.
Jayakumar also used to allegedly clone international credit cards from his contact, identified as Gunashekhar who lives abroad.
The contact used to procure the credit card details of various people through skimming, clone the cards and send them to Jayakumar for use in Bangalore.
Though the amount thus siphoned off is believed to be large, the police are trying to arrive at the exact figure, according to Assistant Commissioner of Police Babu Rajendra Prasad. Most of the gang members are college dropouts working in private firms who fell in with Jayakumar to earn an extra buck.
The police named them as Maharaj (27), Satyanarayana (37), Mohammed Imran (28), Nagaraj (30), Amit Sharma (26), Girish (22), Mohammed Masiuddin (23), Syed Kaleem (21), Sheikh Fayaz (21), Pradeep (31), Raja Manikyam (45), Krishna Naidu (23) and Mohammed Ayaz.
The police are also on the lookout for other suspects.
The police recovered 27 cloned credit cards of various banks, two sports utility vehicles, a car, 11 two-wheelers, 150 gm gold jewellery, a Rado watch, laptops and mobile phones worth Rs. 33 lakh, all purchased by the gang.
