ATM card fraud busted, three held

Police on Friday arrested three members, including two brothers, of an inter-state gang that cloned ATM cards and defrauded several gullible people in several states across the country.

Police recovered Rs 7.04 lakh in cash, a skimming machine, several ATM cards, a laptop, mobile phones and a rental car from the three, who hailed from Bhiwani district of Haryana, according to SPS Nellore district Superintendent of Police Aishwarya Rastogi.

The gang has been active for three years now and was involved in over 1,000 offences in Assam, Bihar, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, besides Andhra Pradesh, Rastogi told PTI.

The arrested have been identified as Sandeep Kumar, Manjeeth Singh (both brothers) and Jagjeeth, all from Bhavani Keda taluk of Bhiwani district in Haryana, police said.

"The gang members travel by plane to various cities and book a rental car to move around and commit offences.

They target old and uneducated people at ATM centres and skim their cards, using a concealed handheld magnetic card reader device, in the garb of helping them withdraw money," the SP said.

The gang members then transfer the data of the ATM card through their mobile phones using Bluetooth facility. They then clone the ATM card data and withdraw money, the SP added.

Following complaints of such ATM frauds, the SP constituted a special team to track down the culprits.

"The special team and the Dargamitta police of Nellore nabbed the gang members near the railway station on Friday.

During investigation we detected 16 cases pertaining to SPS Nellore district, eight cases each to Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam districts, seven to Anantapuramu, four to Kurnool, three to Guntur and one case each to Prakasam district, Vanaparthi (Telangana) and Hyderabad," Rastogi said.

The gross amount involved in all the frauds committed over the last three years across the country could run into a few crores of rupees, police said.

A case under IPC Section 420 (cheating) and provisions of the Information Technology Act has been registered.