5 arrested for cheating foreign nationals by cloning cards

Five people have been arrested for allegedly cloning debit and credit cards of foreign nationals and withdrawing money from their bank accounts, a senior police official said.

A senior official from Mumbai Police's Crime Branch said that these persons, all part of the same gang, would procure data of foreign nationals from open sources and would then fraudulently create debit and credit cards.

"They would then swipe these cloned cards at point-of-sale machines procured from shopkeepers and money would be withdrawn before the foreign nationals could get an SMS intimation of the transaction," the official explained.

The data was of foreign nationals who visited places like Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Kullu Manali, he said.

He said that the money withdrawn this way by the gang might run into crores of rupees.

He identified those arrested today as Mohammed Hasan Iqbal Shaikh (44), Mukesh Sharma (40), Zuber Sayyad (35), Fahim Shora (30) and Abu Bakar (45).

The kingpin, Zuber Sayyad, a resident of Mira Road in neighbouring Thane district, was involved in this fraud for the last five years, he said.

"We are now tracking the sources from where this gang got personal data of the victims as well the shopkeepers whose swipe machines were used," the official said.

He informed that the Crime Branch had seized 65 debit and credit cards, 51 POS swipe machines, two laptops, card readers and cheque books of various banks from the accused.