Police arrests duo with 300 cloned ATM cards

Having purchased a skimming device and a spy camera from a Chinese e-commerce website, two alleged fraudsters targeted ATMs in the national capital and seven other

Having purchased a skimming device and a spy camera from a Chinese e-commerce website, two alleged fraudsters targeted ATMs in the national capital and seven other states to dupe hundreds of people, the Delhi Police said on Friday after arresting them and recovering over 300 cloned cards from their possession.

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While the duo, Krishna Gopal and Sumit Gola, had learnt how to fix the skimming device and camera to ATMs, they didn’t know how to decrypt the stolen data and clone cards. “Depending on how much money they could make from each card, the fraudsters were paying software engineers anywhere between ₹100 and ₹12,000 for cloning each card,” a senior police officer said.

Deputy commissioner of police (south-west district), Devender Arya, said the police received a tip that helped arrest the two suspects from south Delhi’s Mahipalpur. “ We asked them to stop when we intercepted them but they started to run. We were able to chase and nab them. Their bag contained more than 300 cloned debit and credit cards, a skimming device, a camera and other items used in the fraud,” DCP Arya said.

The police added that they also found a pistol and two bullets.

Before they allegedly took to the fraud, 22-year-old Gopal was a taxi driver and Sumit worked at a shopping mall. A few months ago, they joined hands to purchase a skimmer device and a spy camera from a Chinese e-commerce site, the DCP said.

They would then allegedly choose ATMs in Delhi and NCR, fixing the skimmer to steal the data of ATM users. The spy camera would record the PIN numbers of the cars, the DCP said. Later, they allegedly began targeting ATMs in other states like Maharashtra, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.

In the meantime, they had allegedly gotten in touch with some software engineers who would help such people decrypt the stolen data and clone the cards. “The duo would pay the engineers either through Bitcoin or simply deposit the money in their bank accounts,” the DCP said.

The duo would later use the cloned cards to either make purchases online or withdraw whatever cash they could from the debit or credit cards, the police said.

The police are trying to link the recovered 300 cloned cards with their owners, an exercise that will also help the investigators determine how much money the duo had managed to steal all this while, the DCP said.