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Two Sri Lankans held for fake credit card fraud

Police trying to net person operating from France for selling credit card data to the fraudsters.

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Cubbon Park police have arrested two Sri Lankan nationals on charges of faking credit cards and using them to commit fraud to the tune of crores of rupees in Bangalore and Chennai.

Mahendar Karunaraj, 50, a resident of Parimala Golden Gate apartment in Marathalli Outer Ring Road and Ashwin Kumar alias Ashwin, 30, a resident of Madurai in Tamil Nadu are the men arrested.

The police have seized 50 fake credit cards from, eight of which are of Standard Chartered Bank, eight of Axis Bank, 13 of Citi Bank, eight of HSBC, 2 of Barclays, and one each of SBI, UTI, National Trust Bank and others.

The police are trying to arrest a Sri Lankan national living in France, who fraudulently transfers the credit card details through e-mail to these accused persons and another man from Kerala, who supplies machines at Rs 20,000 to manufacture fake credit cards.

Losses drove him to fraud
According to police, Mahendar Karunaraj is unemployed and shuttled between Bangalore and Chennai. The accused told the police that he got into the fake credit card in 2002, after incurring heavy losses in business of selling onions and textiles.

Ashwin Kumar, who settled in Tamil Nadu after the death of his parents and brother, studied only upto 10th standard and worked as a driver. He told the police that he got into the credit card fraud to lead a lavish life.

Anatomy of the fraud

A friend of Karunaraj, who lives in France, would collect data of credit cards from India and other countries and would email the details to Karunaraj, in return for a payment.

An associate of Karunaraj from Kerala supplied an encoder machines that could read and write the credit card data. He also supplied him with an embosser machines used to print names and 16 digits on the fake credit cards. The machines cost Rs20,000 each.

Through the same man, Karunaraj also procured empty plastic cards from Malaysia. These were turned into fake credit cards. Once the credit card data were received, Karunaraj would upload the data received from France on credit cards of India and other countries.

The data would be transferred to the card reader and writer machine and then onto the fake cards. The names and the 16-digit numbers would be embossed using the machines supplied from the man from Kerala.

Once the cards were ready, Karunaraj, Ashwin Kumar and others would visit posh malls and shops to purchase luxury goods that they would later sell to others. Police claim the suspects bought goods worth Rs10 lakh using the fake cards.

The police are in the process of arresting the supplier of machines, and the Sri Lankan in France who provided the data about credit cards.

A police team led by DCP (Central) BR Ravikanthe Gowda, ACP HK Venkataswamy and inspector of the Cubbon Park police station S Badrinath nabbed the accused persons.

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