Gang involved in credit card cloning busted

NEW DELHI - Delhi Police Saturday claimed to have busted a gang involved in cloning credit cards, debit cards and electronic data capture (EDC) machines.

“Ravinder Sunekha, Anil Kumar and Sanjay Kumar Jha were arrested from Kotla Mubarakpur while two others, Shoiab and Majid Khan, are still absconding,” Deputy Commissioner of Police H.G.S. Dhaliwal said.

Police acted on complaints from multinational banks like Standard Chartered, ICICI and Kotak Mahindra Bank regarding transactions being contested by their customers on the grounds that the same were not done by them.

According to police, Anil used to take out credits cards from the parcels meant for delivery to the customers and handed them over to Shoiab for cloning. Shoiab cloned the cards and gave them to Ravinder, who along with his associate Majid Khan, a former employee of ICICI Bank, used to go to the merchants (shopkeepers) to verify the customers whose transactions were declined by the bank.

Khan would note down the credit card number and date of validity.

“He would then pass on the numbers and the dates of validity to Ravinder who used the data on the cloned EDC machines. Sanjay used to reconfigure the merchant ID and terminal ID provided by the merchants and give them to Ravinder. Thus, EDC machines installed at merchant’s office got cloned in Ravinder’s office,” Dhaliwal said.

After reconfiguration, EDC machines installed at Ravinder’s office did not even require a credit card for swapping and only the card number was required to execute the transaction. Police have recovered 11 credit cards, six EDC machines and transaction slips of Rs.20-25 lakh from them.

Kumar worked as a courier boy with Blue Dart Courier Company while Ravinder was an owner of a tour and travels agency and had EDC machines installed in his office at Faridabad.

Sanjay was employed with M/S TVS Enterprises, an authorised service centre for EDC machines.