Mumbai: The Mumbai Police Crime Branch has arrested two men who would allegedly dupe people and withdraw money from people’s accounts from ATM centres.
According to Crime Branch officers, on May 18, an elderly couple filed a complaint with the D.B. Marg police about an unauthorised withdrawal of ₹20,000 from the woman’s account.
“The couple had visited an ATM centre in Grant Road, and the woman had fed her card and PIN number into the machine, when a man came up to her and told her that the machine was faulty. The woman left and withdrew ₹5,000 from another ATM centre, but soon got a message about ₹20,000 being withdrawn from the same account,” said an officer with Crime Branch Unit II.
The Crime Branch, which was conducting parallel inquiries into the matter, learned through informants that the scam was being perpetrated on a regular basis by two men, Shiv Kumar Mishra and Shailendra Mishra, who would mainly target senior citizens who would be more gullible. The duo was arrested from Mira Road on Monday.
How they did it
“The accused would also wait at ATM centres that have two machines. As soon as an elderly person had swiped their card into the machine, they would tell them that the machine was faulty, and ask them to use the other machine. While the target was using the second machine, they would observe the PIN number and use it to withdraw money using the first machine where the target’s swipe session was still active,” said the officer.
The police said the accused have confessed to having pulled off such scams in Thane, Borivali and Shivaji Park.
