In yet another crackdown on bank card fraudsters, the Bank Fraud Wing of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) has busted a gang on Sunday who cloned freshly issued credit cards of Chennai customers in connivance with two courier personnel.
Police arrested Balaji (32), Vignesh (20) and Sridhar (30) and seized the air blower gun, a skimmer device and a laptop containing information on credit card details of 64 persons in Chennai, sources added.
The culprits used an air blower gun to open envelopes containing credit cards meant for new customers of different banks and cloned the cards to swindle lakh of rupees. The gang shares close ties with bank fraudster Umesh alias Shorty and his accomplices who were arrested recently, police said.
Police sources said the fraud came to light when a complaint regarding a bank customer's new credit card being used for purchase a day before he received it by courier was brought to the CCB's attention. “We questioned Vignesh of Royapuram, the person engaged in the courier service who confessed to having given the envelope to his accomplice Balaji of Moolakadai prior to delivery,” said a senior CCB officer.
Balaji had taken the help of Vignesh and his co-worker Sridhar of Vyasarpadi, both attached to a well-known courier firm, to acquire bank envelopes containing new credit cards meant to be delivered to customers.
“With a high-speed air blower gun Balaji had opened the tail end of the envelopes and swiped the new credit cards into a skimmer device and copied the details. Later, he made fake cards with the data and purchased goods including gold jewellery,” the officer added.
The culprits sealed the envelopes and delivered them to the destinations.
They have been operating this way for the last six months, police sources said
A hunt is on to apprehend the mastermind behind the fraud who deployed the trio.
Further investigation is underway to recover the fake cards and to ascertain involvement of more persons.
