2 held for skimming credit cards
■ The accused hired bartenders, waiters to work for them
Two members of a gang that skimmed data from credit and debit cards and robbed about `15 lakh from people who paid at restaurants and pubs in the city, were arrested by the Cyberabad Cyber Crime Police on Wednesday.
The police had earlier arrested two members of the gang, while another accused is yet to be nabbed. City resident, Surendra Inkollu, was the first to lodge a complaint against an unauthorised withdrawal of `1 lakh from his bank account, at an ATM in Banjara Hills. Later, several such complaints were received by the cyber crime police. During the probe, police found that all the victims were once customers of a coffee shop in Jubilee Hills. When the customers gave their debit/credit cards to coffee shop employee Sachin Kumar to swipe it for payment, he (Sachin) swiped the cards in the skimming machine and noted down the PIN numbers. He further shared the details with the gang’s kingpin Sumit Jhingran, who used to give him `2,000 as commission for skimming one card.
Sachin was arrested on August 30, last year. Another accused Kevin Jerry D’Souza of Mumbai was arrested in October this year. Their interrogation helped the Cyberabad police apprehend kingpin Sumit and Gaurav Varma of Shajapur in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. Another accused Rafiq Faruk Khan of Mumbai is still at large.
Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar said accused Sumit was a native of Varanasi and an MBA dropout. He used to work at a call centre in Mumbai. Since his earnings were not sufficient, he hatched a plan to clone the debit and credit cards for unauthorised withdrawal of money.
Sumit then purchased the skimmers, magnetic strips and MSR (Magnetic Stripe Reader) machines online to execute his plan. He lured the waiters and bearers at high-end restaurants and pubs in metropolitan cities with a commission of `2,000 for collecting the data of one debit/credit card along with the PIN number.
“When Sumit was hunting for aides, he came in contact with Kevin, a school dropout from Mumbai in 2015. The former shared his knowledge of skimming and cloning cards with Kevin and offered 15 per cent commission on the successful execution of the fraud. They lured Gaurav Varma, a Yoga trainer from Delhi to work for them and then started recruiting waiters and bearers. They approached Faruk and Sachin, working at a pub in Goa,” the Commissioner said.