Mumbai Police arrest 4 in card cloning racket

The Mumbai crime branch on Tuesday arrested four more accused, including two store managers, in connection with the card cloning racket busted by unit 9 last week

The Mumbai crime branch on Tuesday arrested four more accused, including two store managers, in connection with the card cloning racket busted by unit 9 last week. A total of eight people have been arrested in the case and 181 debit cards, nine skimmer devices and one card reader have been seized. The accused allegedly duped several people by cloning their debit and credit cards. Police are still ascertaining the volume of the fraud committed by the gang.

The four arrested have been identified as Amarjit Rajbhar, Wahid Mohammad Ayub Khan, Vivekanand Shinde and Saif Shaikh.

The four arrested have been identified as Amarjit Rajbhar, Wahid Mohammad Ayub Khan, Vivekanand Shinde and Saif Shaikh.

Rajbhar worked as a manager at a branded garment store in Andheri (West), while Shinde worked as the manager of an ice cream shop in Pune.

During the investigation, police learnt about Khan’s role to identify shop managers and provide them with skimmers and card readers, while Shinde and Shaikh withdrew money using the cloned debit and credit cards.

The activities of the racket came to light when a bank official approached unit 9 of the crime branch about several customers being duped by fraudsters.

Police acted on the information and arrested four accused on February 17, including the mastermind Mohammad Faiz Chaudhary, 27. The other accused were Yashwant Gupta, 23, Azaruddin Ansari, 23, and Ishtiaq Jamal Khan, 22, all residents of Goregaon and Jogeshwari. Chaudhary had allegedly given skimmer devices to several stores or shop managers so they could copy people’s debit and credit card details when they paid for items at the shops. Gupta worked at a Powai-based hotel as a manager and was provided with a skimmer device by Chaudhary.

Gupta cloned the customers’ cards, while Ansari and Khan used to travel in Pune and Satara to withdraw money from the cloned cards, added police. The store managers were tasked by Chaudhary to secretly swipe the customer’s credit and debit cards in the card reader and noted down the PINs entered by the customer. Chaudhary paid ₹500 to the store manager for the details of each card.

After collecting the data from the store managers, Chaudhary then uploaded it onto blank cards and sent other members of the gang to withdraw money in other cities like Pune and Satara, to avoid suspicion, said the officer.