Zuber Sayyed, the alleged mastermind behind the pan-India card cloning racket busted by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch, had a massive network of assistants working for him from at least 20 Indian cities, investigating officers said on Friday.
Fraudulent transactions
Mr. Sayyed, along with four others, was arrested earlier this week in connection with a racket where debit and credit cards of foreign nationals were cloned and their money stolen via fraudulent purchase transactions. The police have recovered 65 cloned cards and 51 Point Of Sale (POS) machines used to swipe the cards for fraudulent transactions.
Officers said that Mr. Sayeed had, since 2013, established a network of accomplices who would travel across the country recruiting small and medium business owners in cities that are popular tourist destinations for foreigners.
He began by enlisting a few Mumbai residents for the task. Over the years, these people recruited others from various cities.
“Their job was to simply to find business owners who had a steady clientele among foreign nationals, and take their POS machines so that transactions made through those machines would not raise any alarms. The business owners would be given up to a 20% cut on every transaction made using their machine. To avoid detection, Mr. Sayyed’s agents would not bring the machines to Mumbai physically, but would have it couriered to various addresses in Mumbai and then delivered to Mr Sayyed,” an officer who is part of the investigation said.
Of the four accused arrested along with Mr. Sayyed, three of them — Hassain Sheikh, Abu Bakr Sheikh and Mukesh Sharma — were allegedly tasked with this job, while the fourth, Faheem Shora, was a shopkeeper who had lent his POS machine for the racket.
On Friday, the Property Cell of the Crime Branch arrested one more accused, identified as Pratap Rai. A resident of Nallasopara, Mr. Rai used to run an ice cream parlour and was one of the people who would find business owners willing to lend their POS machines to Mr. Sayyed.
Never directly
“Mr. Sayyed himself never interacted directly with any of these business owners, and always dealt with them through his network of accomplices, ensuring a layer of security for himself. He himself would operate out of his house in Mira Road, and distribute the proceeds of the crime,” the officer said.
“There was no dearth of POS machines for the racket, as even if one machine is blocked by a bank, there are always other banks willing to provide the machines to business owners. Mr. Sayyed knew this and exploited it to the fullest,” the officer added.
