Ghana national held for withdrawing money by cloning ATM cards

A 37-year-old Ghana national was arrested for allegedly cloning debit cards and fraudulently withdrawing money from ATMs, the police said today.
The accused, Kingsley Boafo, was arrested on August 12 near HDFC Bank ATM, located on Main Najafgarh Road in Uttam Nagar. He has been staying in the country even after his visa had expired, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Surender Kumar.
He had come to Mumbai from Ghana in July 2015 in connection with his garment business. In October that year, he shifted to Delhi and continued the business of exporting ready-made clothes to his country, the police said.

With a desire to earn more in a short period of time, he used to browse the Internet and found ways to clone ATM cards. He bought devices online to clone ATM cards, the police said.
Boafo surveyed the ATMs that did not have security guards and through a skimmer placed in the card reader slot of the machines he would copy details of cards inserted in the slot, the police said, adding the data was downloaded to a laptop and then transferred to a Magnetic Strip Reader/Writer (MSR).
Blank debit cards were swiped through the MSR and these cloned cards were used to withdraw money from the ATMs fraudulently, they said.

Boafo was helped by one Issac, an African, in preparing cloned ATM cards. The duo deleted the stolen data from their devices soon after withdrawing money as the ATM cards, whose data they fraudulently obtained, were blocked by card holders, the police said.
The accused was in Mumbai for a couple of months this year and had returned to Delhi in the last week of July. It is suspected that he committed similar offences in Mumbai also, they said, adding police are on the lookout for Issac.