Rs 10 lakh swindled through cloned ATM cards

Four including HSBC call centre executive held

Hyderabad: Four persons including an executive of HSBC call centre was arrested on Monday on charges of stealing credit and debit cards data and swindling the money by preparing duplicate cards.

The arrested include Syed Jaber of Amberpet, customer support executive of HSBC, R Krishna and K Venkatesh of Secunderabad, both employees of Prodduturi Services IOC petrol pump in Habsiguda and N Vasanth Kumar, employee of Ramanthapur filling station. Another accused Omorye of Nigeria is absconding.

Police seized six high-end Samsung mobiles worth Rs 1.5 lakh, one laptop, three magnetic strip machines better known as skimmers and cash Rs 50,000. Police said Jaber, who worked in HSBC, was looking for ways to make easy money. Accordingly, he did a course in hacking and developed contact with Omorye, a Nigerian. The latter taught Jaber many tricks in stealing credit and debit cards data and how to clone them to prepare duplicate cards.

Subsequently, Jaber purchased the skimmers from abroad and took the assistance of other accused working at petrol pumps to collect the data of credit and debit cards. He also used to purchase stolen data of credit and debit cards from abroad and use it for cloning.

Krishna and Venkatesh helped Jaber in providing the data by reading it using the skimmers given by the latter for attractive commission. Another accused Vasanth Kumar helped the main accused in using the stolen data to convert it into cash, police said.

Through the cloned debit and credit cards, Jaber swindled about Rs 10 lakh, while he was still left with data of about 150 cards containing Rs 25 lakh. A case was registered on a complaint given by one N Sridhar, whose card was cloned after he purchased petrol at Habsiguda petrol pump.

Central Crime Station officials appealed to the people to ensure that their credit and debits cards were swiped in their presence wherever they use them. The officials also appealed to those who swiped their cards since December 2012 at Prodduturi Services IOC Petrol Pump to approach the banks concerned and get their cards blocked and get new cards as a precautionary measure.