Delhi Police Crime Branch-11/08/14

A team of officers of Crime Branch led by Inspector Insp. Kulbir Singh and consisting of SI Ritesh Kumar, SI Vishal Chaudhary, ASI Kuldeep, ASI Manoj, HC Jai Prakash, HC Dinesh, HC Satish Kumar, Ct. Raj Singh, Ct. Jitender, Ct. Lalaram, Ct. Vivek, Ct. Ravi, Ct. Devender, Ct. Amit, Ct. Vinod, Ct. Satyapal, Ct. Prem Singh, Ct. Gyanender, Ct. Rahul, Ct. Arjun Lal and Ct. Anil Chauhan under the supervision of  ACP K.P.S. Malhotra and overall supervision of DCP Bhisham Singh has busted a gang that cloned credit/debit cards of customers visiting a petrol pump.  They then used the cloned credit/debit cards to withdraw money from various ATMs of Delhi and National Capital Region.  The equipment involved in cloning i.e. Encoder, Decoder and Laptop have been recovered.  Three Cheats have been arrested.  One case of such cheating of PS Sarojini Nagar has been worked out.

Specific information was received that the gang of cheats would assemble near a Petrol Pump at Lodhi Road, Delhi.  A trap was laid and a white colour Honda City Car was intercepted.  Three persons were apprehended.  They were identified as 1) Ashish (aged 25 years) s/o Shiv Kumar r/o Laxmi Garden, Loni, Ghaziabad, UP, 2) Rajesh Kumar (aged 31 years) s/o Late Kamal Singh r/o  East Ram Nagar, Mandoli Road Shahdara, Delhi  and 3) Kamal (aged 29 years) s/o Nem Chand r/o Budh Vihar, Phase-I, Delhi.

The cheats were subjected to intensive interrogation.  It was revealed that one of them would join a petrol pump as an attendant. In March, 2014 Ashish joined a petrol pump on Ring Road as an attendant.  He had in his possession an encoder i.e. a skimming machine that was in the shape of small key chain. This machine was purchased online through Internet. This machine i.e. the encoder had a Magnetic Strip Reader which made a mirror image of the data available in the debit/credit card.  Ashish would surreptitiously swipe the debit/credit card of the customer in the skimming machine so that data would be encoded in the machine.  Another important task was to obtain the pin number of the card.  Hence when the transaction would take place, he would make the customer enter the pin number repeatedly in the swiping machine of the petrol pump.  In this way he would visually see the pin number of the debit/credit card. The data was then provided to Rajesh and Kamal. They decoded the information with the help of a decoder i.e. a Magnetic data reader and laptop.  The decoded data was then transferred on to dummy smart cards. These cloned cards were then used to withdraw money from ATM situated at isolated places.  In order to prevent being identified at ATM machines as cameras were installed, they used caps to hide their faces. They withdrew money generally around midnight so that if the customers received a SMS alert, being night time, it would be not viewed.

Till date according to them, they had skimmed data of around 30 debit/credit cards holders and have earned huge amount of ill-gotten money.  They had even bought a Honda City Car from the proceeds of the crime.  Ashish, Rajesh and Kamal are all school drop outs.  Kamal worked as a trainer in a Gymnasium while Rajesh worked as a clerk.

Local police of PS Sarojini Nagar has been informed about their arrest.