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| Edited By: |Source: PTI |Updated: Mar 29, 2018, 03:30 AM IST
NEW DELHI: Four persons, including a woman, were arrested in the national capital for allegedly running an e-ticketing racket which earned over Rs five crore by cheating Indian Railways and airlines, including Indian, through fraudulent use of credit cards.
Naeem Ahmed (24), Shahid Iqbal (25), Feroz Alam (23) and Kanika Budhiraja (27) were caught by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police following investigations into a complaint by American Express Bank, Kingfisher Airlines and Spicejet regarding credit card misuse, police said on Sunday.
The gang allegedly used to buy airline and rail tickets on the internet using credit cards procured fraudulently, they said adding the arrests have highlighted "certain lacunae in the ticketing system followed by airlines across the world".
Most of the credit card details were procured by the gang from their associate in Bangkok, they said adding they took cash from customers promising them cheap and discounted tickets.
When the airline or the bank tried to realise their money from the credit card owners, the actual card owner would protest and then it would be found that the card had been misused, police said.
The arrested persons had allegedly misused credit cards of over 40 Indian and foreign banks.
The gang was cracked after investigations led the sleuths to Kolkata from where the three men were arrested on December 21. Five days later, Budhiraja was arrested from her house in Rana Pratap Bagh here.
More than 5,000 airline tickets as well as train tickets have been bought on the internet using these stolen credit cards details.
The credit cards preferred by the gang were American Express, ABN Amro Russia, Citibank USA, Banko Santiago Chile, ANZ Grindlays Bank, ICICI, HSBC, Zion's Bank and many others.
The airlines affected were Kingfisher Red, Kingfisher Airlines, Spicejet and Indigo besides Air India, which lost about Rs five crore.
Ahmed is considered the brain behind the racket and he allegedly procured data of credit cards from a woman known to him as Manjit Kaur in Bangkok.
He allegedly bought air tickets as well as rail tickets using these stolen credit card details on the internet and provided these tickets to his associates who further sold them as discounted air fare tickets, police said.
The charge against Iqbal and Alam, who run two travel agencies in Kolkata, is that they sold the tickets given by Ahmed, they said.
Budhiraja is the daughter of Kaur, whose real name is Karampal Kaur Sethi (50).
Naeem allegedly deposited money in an Axis Bank account for all the stolen credit card details he received from Manjit Kaur via e-mail in Kolkata, police said.
This account was opened in the name of Budhiraja and was operated by her. She withdrew money from this account and sent it through illicit channels to Bangkok to her mother and brother Sanjit Singh who also lives in Bangkok, they alleged.
