The bank fraud wing of the city police has busted another credit card cloning gang that targeted customers shopping at Star Bazaar in Ampa Skywall, Aminjikarai, and siphoned lakhs over the past six months.
According to sources with the Central Crime Branch, a team led by deputy commissioner S. Jeyakumar that investigated complaints from HDFC Bank on money being withdrawn from some of their customers’ accounts, unearthed the fraud and arrested five persons on Friday.
According to the police, Sivasurya (24), a cashier at Star Bazaar, had lured customers into taking memberships at the store and managed to copy card data on to a skimmer device.
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“He discreetly noted down the PIN of customers while they used the electronic data capture machine at the store, and later gave the numbers and the skimmer with the card details to his accomplices Vijay Charles (36) and his brother Raja (35), both from Periyar Nagar,” said an investigating officer.
The brothers cloned the cards using an encoder device and withdrew lakhs from various ATMs in the city. They got the skimmer from Shiju John (29) of Mangadu, an officer said. Shiju was in possession of a cache of credit card data of international customers.
Shiju, his aide Murugan, Vijay, Raja and Sivasurya were arrested by the police on Friday and remanded to custody.
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