A racket in stealing money from credit/debit cards of gullible people was busted by the city police on Tuesday.
A special team apprehended Deepkumar (33) and Praveenkumar Kashyap (32) of Utthamnagar, New Delhi, who relieved many people of several lakhs of rupees through ‘vishing’.
The modus operandi of the suspects was to ring up cardholders claiming that they were calling from the ‘bank’s customer care’ to raise the credit limit or renew the cards. After obtaining the credit or debit card details and the Card Verification Value number, they would swindle the money by transferring funds or making online purchases.
Following a series of complaints from victims and bank officials, Commissioner of Police S. George formed a special team of the Central Crime Branch to investigate the fraud. In the last five months, the Chennai police received about 300 complaints. Prakash, manager of a private bank, lodged a police complaint stating that card details of 42 customers from his bank were collected by the suspects who transferred Rs. 5 lakh.
It was found that money of all the 42 customers of ICICI card details were deposited first into the mobile wallet account of Ashraf Ali and Sunny of Utham Nagar, New Delhi, and later into their bank accounts. “We tried to track their mobile phones, but they had used fake address proofs to activate them. When we verified bank details, one account had a genuine address, based on which we nabbed Deepkumar and Praveenkumar Kashyap , who runs a mobile shop. Their aides Ashraf Ali and Sunny are absconding,” a police officer said.
Deepkumar and Kashyap, used to take photo copies of the identity or address proof of their customers who applied for SIM cards. The suspects also operated fake online shopping portals ‘AM Shopping.in’ and ‘Kamkashi Solutions’. Using the stolen card details they would make purchases from these fake sites and the money would get deposited into their accounts. Those arrested were produced in a court and remanded in judicial custody.
