Mumbai: Dahisar Police arrested three men for cyber fraud after they were allegedly caught for committing data theft, cloning the ATM cards and then wiring the funds in another account opened in the name of a fraud company. The accused trio has been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act.
Police said that the accused trio were buying a cell phone from a shop in Dahisar using a clone ATM card the officials apprehended them. During the checking, police seized a number of ATM cards of several banks from the accused men and then they revealed their modus operandi of cyber fraud. Preliminary investigation revealed that of the three accused, two of them used to install a skimmer, a card reader that can be disguised to look like part of an ATM, at several outlets in Mumbai and Thane, following which the stolen data would be given to the third accused.
After procuring the ATM data from this process, the third accused had established a fake/duplicate company, THE STAR, in Kolkata, wherein he had opened a bank account in the name of the fake company and accessed a swipe machine, while another account was opened in Nashik, wherein he accessed the ATM card. The accused trio used to then wire money from the cloned ATM card to the company's account in Kolkata, which was further transferred to Nashik, subsequently only to be cashed in by the arrested men.
Based on all this information, it was revealed that the accused have duped at least 50 people from March to June, siphoning at least ₹6.51 lakh, that was seized from the main accused's bank account. Later, a search was conducted at their homes, where police seized 40 debit cards, 250 blank cards, one swipe machine, one laptop, three mobiles from them. They were produced before a local magistrate court and remanded in police custody till June 28 for further probe.
