VISAKHAPATNAM: The Cybercrime police have busted an ATM card cloning racket and arrested a Haryana-based person for withdrawing money from cloned ATM cards in various cities.
Acting on a tip-off, cybercrime inspector V Gopinath and his team nabbed the culprit from a hotel at Peda Rushikonda here on Sunday. The arrested was identified as Virender Singh (29), son of Gajan Singh from Haryana.
During interrogation, Virender Singh confessed to the crime. He said that he had been working as a driver for the last eight years and developed friendship with one Kuldeep Singh in Haryana. When Virender Singh asked Kuldeep how to earn money in an easy way, the latter introduced one Sandeep Singh from Haryana to Virender Singh. Since then, the trio started cloning debit cards and also replacing the original ATM cards with the duplicate ones.
As per the plan, in January 2019, Virender Singh along with two others — Kuldeep Singh and Sandeep Singh — came to Visakhapatnam by flight from Delhi and checked into a hotel. They visited SBI and Bank of Baroda ATM kiosks and secretly recorded a customer withdrawing money from the ATM kiosk. They also replaced the debit cards of the customer with the duplicate ones. After that, they went back to the hotel room and cloned the ATM cards. Later, the trio went back to Haryana and withdrew the money from ATM kiosks in Ranchi, Andheri, Mumbai, Asansol, Deoghar and Shiridi.
The three accused visited Vizag in March, April and May and indulged in ATM cloning and card replacement. On May 21, Virender Singh along with Kuldeep Singh came to Vizag from Delhi by flight and went to Madhurawada. The duo visited various ATM kiosks and cloned debit cards.
On knowing about the police raid, Kuldeep Singh escaped from the hotel room, while Virender Singh was caught. Cybercrime police seized four cloned ATM cards, one Axis Bank debit card and a mobile phone from Virender Singh.