A doctor at a private hospital here lost about ₹1 lakh from his bank account after unidentified fraudsters allegedly cloned his debit cards and withdrew money from the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) of two banks in the city.
The police said that the money belonging to Muhammed Shabeer, a doctor with the Radiation Department of a hospital at Nettoor, was withdrawn between 6.50 a.m. and 7.20 a.m. from the ATMs of the banks located at Mundempilly and within the city respectively on Monday.
The fraudsters are learnt to have used the skimming technique to clone debit cards to withdraw money from ATMs. ATM skimming is a theft of card information in which a small device is used to steal information during a legitimate ATM transaction.
The gang is learnt to have used clone cards to withdraw money from the ATM at Mundempilly on four occasions and six times from another ATM in the city within a gap of a few minutes. The complainant alerted the police immediately after he received a message on his mobile about the withdrawal. The police have requested the bank authorities to provide them with the CCTV footage from the two locations. They said that a colleague of the complainant had also lost money in a similar manner a few days ago.
