Mira Road: Cops on lookout for fraudster who siphoned customer's money using skimmer at ATM

A private bank has lodged a complaint with the police claiming that recently they had found that cyber-fraudsters had installed a skimmer device in one of their ATM centers and had managed to siphon money off some of their customers by illegally procuring their bank card details.

According to the police, the complainant in the case is an assistant manager of the Mira Road branch. As per the complainant, the bank also has its ATM center near the entrance. On April 01, around 12:30 pm, the security guard of the ATM center informed the victim that some unknown objects were present near the ATM's cash dispensing unit.

"On examining the said object, it was found to be a skimmer device. The said skimmer device was installed to copy the data of the ATM cards of the customers that would visit the center. The bank staff also found a hidden camera at the ATM machine which was smartly installed to video record the ATM password of the customers," said a police officer.

He added, "The skimmer device also contained a battery and a 16GB memory card as well. The bank staffer then checked their records to ascertain whether any customer has lost their money due to skimming and learnt that some customers indeed had lost their money and it is suspected that fraudsters had used cloned cards to siphon the money. We are checking the CCTV records of the ATM center to get more leads about the suspect involved."

The bank then approached the police and have got a complaint lodged in the matter on Tuesday. A case has been registered under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (punishment for identity theft) and 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.

This year, at least two such cases of skimmer device having been installed in the ATM center has been registered by the Bhoiwada police.

Published on: Wednesday, April 06, 2022, 07:47 PM IST