Man loses Rs 1 lakh after bank card is cloned; cops suspect racket

The Parksite police are probing what they suspect to be part of a larger racket orchestrated by cyber criminals who compromise ATM machines by installing skimming devices in them, gathering card details of customers, cloning their debit and credit cards, and then using the cards for transactions.

According to the police, the investigation began on a complaint by Sanket Sunil Sawant, a bank employee from Kanjurmarg, who realised that Rs 1 lakh had been debited from his account for a transaction carried out in Nagpur, at a time when he was in Mumbai with his ATM card securely in his possession.

After having received an alert message from his bank, Sawant checked his account and realised he had fallen prey to a scam. He lodged a police complaint, and a probe revealed that his card had been swiped to buy jewellery from a shop in Nagpur.

“The fraudster has been captured in the CCTV footage of the Nagpur jewellery shop. This is a clear case of skimming and cloning of a bank card. Efforts are on to nab the culprit and bust the entire racket,” said Vilas Jadhav, Senior Police Inspector, Parksite police station.

A cyber expert said that cyber criminals install skimming devices in place of the debit card slots in ATM machines and also set up a mini camera pointed at the keypad to obtain card details of customers who use the ATM machines. Once armed with the details, they then clone the card and use it for shopping. The skimming devices can also be installed in point-of-sale machines.