Mumbai: The Cyber police’s inquiries against the Bulgarian national, who was arrested in an alleged debit card cloning case earlier this month, have widened the scope of the investigation beyond international borders. The police have found that most of the people whose data the accused had misused are foreign nationals.
Modus operandi
The accused, identified as Acklando Mykhaylo, was arrested in Juhu on April 15 for allegedly trying to withdraw money using a cloned debit card from an ATM of a leading bank. The police, in a search of his rented apartment, found several similarly cloned debit cards and are interrogating him to find out his modus operandi.
“We learned that the debit card details that he used to make the cloned debit cards are those of foreign nationals who have accounts in the same bank. We suspect that Mr. Mykhaylo had obtained debit card details of customers based abroad, and then came to India in order to misuse it, so that tracing his activities would become harder,” said an officer who is part of the investigation.
Bank to give details
The police have written to the bank asking it to send them the details of all their foreign customers, who have complained of money being withdrawn from their accounts without their knowledge, so that they can compare the data with the results of Mr. Mykhaylo’s investigation. The police suspect that he had accomplices abroad who would provide the data to him.
“Mr. Mykhaylo had come to India in July last year and prior to this, he had come to India in 2014 and stayed here for some months. We are obtaining more information about his stay in the country during that time and are finding out if any similar complaints were reported to the bank,” the officer said.
Preliminary investigation indicates that Mr. Mykhaylo might have withdrawn money from a large number of accounts, as he had a high standard of living and made almost all his payments in cash.
Published - April 25, 2017 01:05 am IST
