Mumbai Police Cyber Cell has arrested two Romanian nationals for allegedly cloning ATM cards and withdrawing money from victims' bank accounts, said officials on Tuesday.
The police have recovered cloned ATM cards, micro camera and cloning machines from their possession.
The accused used to plant the micro camera and the magnetic chip in the cloning machine and fix it in the ATM machine.
The accused have been identified as Miyu Ruchinal and Budai Romana.
Mangesh Desai, Inspector of Police, Cyber Cell, said that six months back, a woman approached to police and complained that Rs 6.05 lakh was withdrawn from his account from an ATM machine. "For the last six months we were trying to arrest the accused. When we arrested the accused we found micro camera and the magnetic chip in the ATM machine," he said.
"We scanned the CCTV footage of the ATM centre and saw the accused planting the micro camera and the magnetic chip in the ATM machine. Later, we saw the accused sitting in a red colour car outside the ATM. We tracked the vehicle through the number plate and found it parked at the Lokhandwala area. After 48 hours the accused went out. We followed the car and noticed that it was parked outside an ATM centre at Malad," said Mangesh Desai.
"We caught the accused Miyu Ruchinal red-handed while installing the cloning device. We also found the micro camera and magnetic chip in his pocket and several ATM cards. The accused confessed to the crime," he added.
Later, we raided his hideout and we arrested another accused Budai Alin Romana. We also recovered all the items used in ATM cloning, one laptop, five mobile phone and 70,000 cash.
On further interrogation of cyber police, it was found that the accused were living in Lokhanwala area for the last four years.
Further investigation is underway.
