Tricksters are from Romania, skimmers are brought from England and the fraud is committed in Delhi and Hyderabad!
Welcome to the curious crime of Europeans flying into Delhi, stealing crucial details of bank cards in Delhi and Hyderabad and withdrawing money in Mumbai. Two of the four Romanians involved in the case have flown back to their country.
What the other two foreigners arrested by Cyber Crime wing of Cyberabad police revealed to the investigators leaves a lot to be desired about the anti-fraud systems in place at the ATM centres of different banks. The duo told the interrogators that stealing data of bank cards (debit or credit) was common in Romania and neighbouring Bulgaria.
In this modus operandi, the tricksters place a skimmer over the card slot ensuring the customers don’t grow suspicious. The skimmer comprises of a magnetic strip reader, a memory card and a battery. “When this is placed over the ATM machine’s card slot, the customer is actually swiping his or her card on the skimmer,” Cyber Crimes ACP Ch. Y. Srinivas Kumar explained. The fraudsters would also keep a panel containing hidden camera facing the keypad.
As the customer presses Personal Identity Number, the camera records the same. The Romanian gang had installed skimmers and cameras inside four ATM centres of different banks at Vijayanagar Colony, Yousufguda, Jeedimetla and Kukatpally. None of it had a security guard.
“All four ATM centres had surveillance cameras inside. Irony is the video footage is not monitored regularly. They retrieve and examine it only when an offence is reported,” an investigator said. That made job of the Romanian gang easier.
They would walk inside the ATM centres, place the skimmers and cameras, come a day later, collect the skimmers and camera and return to their shelter. The tricksters would upload the card reader data and video footage recoded by the camera onto a laptop.
The gang secured gift cards (which were akin to bank cards) by shopping at H&M stores in Mumbai. “They transferred the data of each card onto the gift cards and noted the PIN by carefully watching the video footage of the finger movements of the customer,” the investigators explained.
The gang admitted to the police that they stole information of nearly 2,000 cards in Hyderabad. They used some of them to withdraw money from ATM centres in Mumbai. “We understand they withdrew ₹40 lakh. While ₹35 lakh was recovered from the arrested duo, the latter spent the remaining sum on staying in hotels and partying at pubs,” the police said.
