New Delhi:
With the arrest of two youths hailing from Mumbai, Delhi Police claimed to have cracked a gang of cheats who used international bank data to prepare cloned and forged credit cards.
Police recovered 87 cloned debit and credit cards of various banks containing data of foreigner customers, two magnetic strip reader machines and a specially designed Embosser machine made in France used for preparing cloned credit cards, which has been caught first time in North India.
The arrested have been identified as Dharmesh (24) and Rashid Sheikh (24), H G S Dhaliwal, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South), said. "They have used data of international customers only," he said.
The arrest came on January 25 from south Delhi's Saket mall following investigations into a complaint filed by an official of Axis Bank that some unknown persons with the help of cloned cards in the names of various customers of the bank which caused huge loss to the bank.
"Most of the data hacked by the culprits belonged to international customers and later on cloned cards were prepared in Indian names and purchasing was done. Technical surveillance shown that the accused were residing in Gurgaon," Dhaliwal said.
Their hideouts were traced and raids were conducted at the hideouts of accused persons, but the suspects already left their hideouts after getting inkling about the police complaint.
On Tuesday, a tip off was received that members of this gang were in MGF Mall in Saket and are planning to purchase goods by using cloned cards and the duo were arrested.
During interrogation, Dhaliwal claimed, the duo came in contact with one Ahmed through one of their common friends in Mumbai.
"They hatched a plan to prepare cloned credit cards and debit cards to earn quick money. They are experts in data hacking and as such they decided to hack the data of foreigner customers only because they rarely file complaint in India," he said.
The arrested duo has expertise in hacking and stealing the data. After getting the desired data, they used to attach the data reader to computer and get all the data transferred to their computer and prepare cloned card with the help of specially designed card printer machine made in France, he said.
"They also prepared there fake photo IDs and carried the same with them to avoid suspicion. Once they prepared the clone cards, they purchased expensive items like gold ornaments, laptops, expensive mobile phones, branded clothes, perfumes and other electronic and household items from the malls/shops and sold these items in grey market," he said.
Sheikh was earlier arrested in 2010 by Kolaba Police in Mumbai for his involvement in a cheating case and he remained in jail for three months. After release on bail he came in contact with Ahmed and Dharmesh and they all hatched a plan to prepare cloned cards.
Dharmesh came in contact with one Alim Sheikh of Andheri West and learnt cloning of cards from him. Alim Sheikh introduced himself with Ahmed and Rashid Sheikh.