3 people arrested for cloning over 400 ATM cards in Thane

The Thane police have arrested three people for allegedly cloning at least 414 ATM cards and stealing data with an aim to withdraw money from the accounts. The accused used a skimming machine to clone the card and copy the data to further commit fraud.

The accused had stolen money from a 65-year-old complainant Vandana Gori’s account by engaging her grandson in a conversation, who had come to withdraw money from an ATM. The accused took his ATM card, cloned it on the skimmer machine that one of his partners carried in his trouser pocket, later took out all the details of his bank account and passwords and withdrew Rs. 73,000.

Assistant Police Inspector Pradip Sarfare, said, “We were behind these accused for the past few months. They’d return home after eight to ten such theft cases. The trio got this training from the village they belong to. They said that most in their village are involved in such activity. We had their CCTV footage and through other technical details like dump data records and several other ways, we tracked them.”

The accused, identified as Jamil Shaikh (21), Govind Singh (25) and Ashish Kumar Singh (22) were based from Uttar Pradesh and used to come to Thane and Mumbai for cheating. The police have recovered the data of 414 ATM cards from their laptops and are reaching out to the owners to get details about the fraud that they faced.

The police have also seized a skimmer machine, card writer, laptop, around 42 ATM card on different names and Rs 22,000 cash. “We check the laptop seized from the accused to find data of around 414 ATMs card copied in the laptop. We are scrutinizing in how many cases they are involved in,” said Senior Police Inspector Sachin Gawde.