Mumbai jeweller held in EDC machine chargeback fraud

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the city police on Sunday arrested a Mira Road based jeweller for allegedly duping a private bank by undertaking dubious transactions through the Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machine given by the bank.

The EOW claims that six different business establishments, including the store of the arrested accused have allegedly duped the bank to the tune of Rs 1.77 crore.

The arrested person has been identified as Prashant Pingle, owner of Sai Siddhi jewellers. Pingle resides in Chandresh Arcade building in Mira Road.

According to the EOW sources, complainant is an assistant manager of the bank. His work profile includes giving approval to the new business clients of the bank, stopping payment of dubious transactions, informing superiors about it and taking actions on dubious businessmen clients.

"Pingle too was provided EDC machine by the bank for his business transactions. It had come to light that, between 24 April 2008 and 24 September 2008, several businessmen had misused the EDC machines to carry out dubious transactions worth Rs 1.77 crore," said an EOW officer, requesting anonymity.

The bank then lodged a complaint in this regard with Samta Nagar police. The case was then transferred to the EOW for further investigation.

"Investigation revealed that Sai Siddhi had done five dubious transactions worth Rs 3.39 lakh using EDC machine of the bank. After having committed the offence, Pingle shut down his operations and went into hiding," the officer said.

"Investigations revealed that Pingle and other five business establishments had used stolen debit/credit card data of the customers for bogus transactions. Since the customer's whose card data were illegally used were from abroad and never did the transactions, they reported about it to their banks and the transactions were then charged back, which resulted in a loss of Rs 1.77 crore to the complainant's bank," the officer said.

"The accused seems to be part of a gang that steals credit/debit card data of foreign based customers and then uses them in different outlets in Mumbai to commit fraud," said another EOW officer.