Two held for cloning cards

Accused had duplicated over 500 cards in three months

Two persons have been arrested for allegedly cloning cards in the Capital. The police said that the accused had withdrawn over ₹25 lakh from over 500 cloned cards in three months.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka) Anto Alphonse said that the accused have been identified as Rajesh Sharma alias Bablu (52) and Shamsher alias Sheera (22).

Police said that on Monday they received an information about a cheater, who withdraws money from ATMs by using cloned cards, coming to Dwarka sector 20. A trap was laid and Rajesh was arrested. “Upon frisking him, 10 cloned debit and credit cards, four transaction slips, and one VeriFone data cloning machine was recovered. Further, on his instance, six more cloning machines, 61 cloned cards along with other cloning devices were recovered,” Mr Alphonse said, adding that his associate Shamsher was also arrested after Rajesh disclosed about his involvement.

During interrogation, Rajesh allegedly revealed that he is a BSc graduate from University of Delhi and had been arrested a few times before.

“He was married in 2000 but his wife left him after he was arrested in a cheating case. He came in contact with one Irfan who taught him how to clone cards and again got arrested in cases of theft after which his second wife also left him,” the officer said.

Subsequently, he came in contact with Shamsher and got in touch with a man from Jamaica, who provided software for the cloning machine which he bought from China, the police said.

The police said that in 2019, Rajesh took a spa centre on rent and asked customers to swipe cards on the cloning machines which would store their data. The data was then downloaded in the laptop and further transferred to blank cards which they would use to withdraw money.