Over Rs.2 lakh withdrawn using cloned ATM cards

CHANDIGARH - The Chandigarh Police have received four complaints since Thursday regarding the fraudulent withdrawal of over Rs.2 lakh from ATMs located in various parts of this union territory.

The only similarity is that all the four victims had State Bank of India (SBI) ATM cards. The complainants alleged that when the money was withdrawn from their accounts, the ATM cards were with them.

“We are looking into the complaints regarding the withdrawal of money through duplicate ATM cards. We suspect that it is the work of professional criminals. We are also scrutinising the CCTV footage of the banks to get some clues about the miscreants,” Jaswant Singh Khaira, deputy superintendent of police (east), told IANS Sunday.

“From the preliminary investigation, we suspect that the miscreants had cloned the original ATM cards by placing a card-reader in the slot of the machine. They might have got the password by placing a micro-camera somewhere near the ATM machine,” he added.

The police is also not denying the possibility of the involvement of SBI bank officials in the crime.

One of the complainants Hans Raj, a retired Haryana government employee, said: “I got a message regarding the withdrawal of Rs.80,000 from my account Saturday. Initially, I took it lightly but when I verified it from the bank, they told me that somebody had withdrawn that money through my ATM card Friday.”

Last month, Chandigarh Police had arrested a group of miscreants who had allegedly withdrawn Rs.3 lakh from accounts of different people by using cloned ATM cards.