3 fall prey to con-artists
TWO suspected con-artists allegedly swindled three people in Harare of more than $5 000 through card cloning and used the proceeds to gamble at a local casino.
The suspects replicated Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards and went on to use all the cash in the complainants’ accounts.
Among the victims is The Sunday Mail news editor Morris Mkwate, who lost $1 500.
The other two complainants are Tsitsi Chichaya and Vusani Matiza, who lost $600 and $3 000 respectively.
The suspects, Nyaradzai Wisdom Mazviwanza (31), a director of a shelf company called Mutatis Software Engineering and Archford Jiri (33), appeared before magistrate Ms Josephine Sande, charged with fraud.
They were released on $300 bail each and would be back in court on September 2.
It is, however, not clear how the accused persons cloned the said cards.
Prosecuting, Mr Sebastian Mutizirwa alleged that sometime in March this year, Mazviwanza and Jiri, acting in connivance with their two accomplices still at large, cloned Mkwate’s National Building Society debit card.
On March 18, the suspected fraudsters went to African Sun Casino at the Harare Exhibition Park and purchased casino tokens worth $1 500 using the cloned card.
It is alleged they only used tokens valued at $300 for betting, before requesting for a refund of $1 200.
The refund was transferred into Mazviwanza’s bank account, who then withdrew the money and shared it with his alleged accomplices.
Two months later, the suspected fraudsters cloned Chichaya’s TM My Cash debit card.
They went to Montclair Casino in Highlands and purchased $600 worth of tokens before using $200 worth of tokens.
The accused persons, the State alleged, requested that they be refunded $400 and the money was transferred into Mazviwanza’s account.
Using the same method, the suspected fraudsters, armed with a fake cloned card belonging to Matiza, went back to Montclair Casino and used the card to purchase tokens worth $3 000.
They allegedly used all the tokens through gambling.
The suspected fraudsters also used the card to purchase food.
The offence came to light when the complainants received notifications of the transactions on their mobile phones from their banks.
Online reports say card cloning is rife in most parts of the world.
Sometimes an ATM card may simply be swapped and a customer is given another card.
The service provider who swaps the card monitors the PIN code entered by the customer and remains using the original card to make more transactions.
Card skimming or card cloning uses a device to fraudulently copy bank customer details stored on the magnetic strip on a debit or credit card.