Chennai:
A five member gang involved in stealing credit and debit card data and producing cloned ones to swindle money from accounts of card holders was arrested in Chennai today, police said.
Three laptops, 12 Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines, 40 debit and credit cards, encoder gadgets, mobile phones and Rs 1.40 lakh in cash were seized from the accused. Fake bank and government documents were also seized from one of them.
Police said an employee of a retail outlet at a mall in Chennai copied credit and debit data of customers stealthily while billing them and passed on the data to two other gang members, who made fake cards, incorporated customers' data in it and used them to withdraw money.
A complaint was lodged by HDFC Bank that fraudulent financial transactions had taken place in the accounts of many of its customers even while they had physical custody of debit cards.
The bank suspected that the card data could have been stolen in a particular shop in the mall as fraudulent dealings were detected only after the customers visited that particular shop.
The bank fraud prevention team of Central Crime branch conducted investigations and apprehended the accused.