HYDERABAD: A former IT engineer from Chennai and his four associates, were arrested by the Rachakonda special operations team sleuths on Friday for cloning credit cards of foreign nationals in the US, UK and Australia and using them illegally in Hyderabad and other cities. The police said that the accused installed the stolen data onto the promotional MICR cards available at shopping malls and siphoned off nearly `30 lakh from the accounts of the foreigners. In the process, the accused also made use of POS machines used by traders.
The gang led by Ayyappan alias Rajesh (30) from Chennai, has defrauded foreigners mainly from USA, UK and Australia to the tune of over `30 lakh till now. Hailing from Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, Rajesh developed friendship with Hyderabad-based P Raghavendra and P Vamsi Krishna.
“When Rajesh was working as as commission agent, he became a member of ICQ App, an instant messaging app from where he learnt about cloning. Then he purchased a cloning device and bought the data of international credit cards online,” Rachakonda police commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat said.
Rajesh shared the account details with Raghavendra, to write the data on promotional cards. Vamsi, who has procured the POS machines from various businessmen, offered 20 per cent commission to them on the transactions and took the remaining amounts. “The gang took the help of two businessmen Challa Bhaskar and Sidhula Bhaskar, to commit the fraud,” the commissioner said.