Man who provided gang swipe machines arrested

MUMBAI : The property cell of the Mumbai crime branch arrested one more accused from Nallasopara on Friday who provided swiping machines to alleged mastermind Zuber Sayyad in the card cloning racket. Sayyad along with other accused allegedly duped around 1,000 foreign nationals by cloning their debit and credit cards and withdrew more than ₹30 crore since 2013.

The arrested accused has been identified as Pratap Rai, 45, a Nalasopara resident who was earlier arrested by cyber police in 2014 in a debit and credit card cloning case. Police said Rai used to take a five per cent cut and his job was to convince shopkeepers and provide swap machines to

Sayyad. Rai was also given another job, to collect cash from shopkeepers, said a crime branch official. He said Rai had provided six swap machines that were used to swap cloned cards of foreign nationals at tourist places.

Rai was produced in court and remanded in police custody till June 26. Other four suspects who were arrested along with Sayyad on Thursday have been identified

as Hasan Shaikh, 40, Fahim Shora, 30, Abu Bakar, 45, and Mukesh Sharma, 45.

“Several police teams have been formed and a few teams are going to tourist places like Kullu Manali, Goa and others to question shopkeepers who provided swap machines to the accused and took 20%-30% cuts of the sum withdrawn from the foreigners’ debit cards,” said an official.