Card cloning gang was operational for five months in Mumbai

The DN Nagar police found 250 blank cards when they raided the home of the three accused.

The DN Nagar police investigating the card cloning racket of which a gang of three from Delhi were arrested on Friday, said the trio had been operational for the past five months. The suspects were taken into custody for tampering with ATM machines in Mumbai in order to steal data of customers.

The suspects used scammers, cameras and laptops to steal bank information(HT Photo)

The accused used a skimmer and micro-camera to steal data of customers and later used them to clone cards with which they withdrew lakhs of rupees.

The three accused are identified as Dharmendra Saini, Siddharth Gandhi and Amarveer Singh. They had previously been arrested in connection to similar cyber-crime cases in which they had used skimmers to steal data of bank customers.

The police said their probe is on to find out how many other ATM machines across Mumbai have been tampered by the gang and how many undetected FIRs have been registered against them across Mumbai.

With the information obtained from the accused, the police are taking help from banks to find out how many of their customers have complained about losing money to card cloning.

The police said the accused spent a lot of the stolen money, staying in five star hotels, partying and air travel.

The racket was unearthed after the police received a complaint from a public sector bank, about a skimmer being found by a bank inspection team in one of the ATM kiosks in DN Nagar area of Andheri (West).

The three were arrested when they returned to the ATM to remove the skimmer and micro camera. During a search of their home, the DN Nagar police found more than 250 blank cards, skimmers, spy cameras and laptops.