Goa Police on Wednesday announced a reward of ₹1,000 for citizens who detect ATM card skimming gear in the cash dispensing machines.
Goa police, in an advisory, said, “Any citizen, including police personnel, who is able to detect a cloning device [skimmer] in any ATM machine shall be rewarded with ₹1,000 by the Goa Police. In case, it leads to the arrest of the accused, the person shall be awarded by ₹5,000 and a commendation certificate.”
This year, the Goa Police have so far registered 12 cases in the skimming racket and found the involvement of Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian nationals.
The advisory said, “The electronic data on the magnetic chip is copied by the skimmers and stored in the memory card attached to it. They also install a pinhole camera just above the keyboard of the ATM machine to record the PIN numbers of ATM card.”
The police advisory claimed that from interrogation of the accused arrested so far, it has come to light that Goa was chosen for the racket as it is a popular tourist destination where debit/credit cards are used a lot.
