Easy pickings for a techie

Farhaaz Ahmad (21) claimed that hundreds of ATM card-cloning palmtop ‘Made-in China’ machines or gadgets were already in circulation in Delhi and its satellite towns.

Farhaaz Ahmad (21) claimed that hundreds of ATM card-cloning palmtop ‘Made-in China’ machines or gadgets were already in circulation in Delhi and its satellite towns.

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These gadgets, delivered at doorsteps, were available online on many gadget shopping websites for as cheap as Rs 4,000-5,000. Rest was easy for a reasonably savvy computer software expert.

From a middle class family in Meerut, where one of his sisters is pursuing M Tech, Ahmad and two of his accomplices bought the Card Reader/Writer from a website offering such products two months back.

“I was amazed to see that about 70 people from Delhi and around had already placed orders for Credit Card Reader/Writers on a single website. As per my estimate there are more than 200 such gadgets in the NCR,” he said.
Ahmad said most such sites offered Chinese card readers/writers, which were cheap and available at the doorsteps.

“However, there are many websites that offer more sophisticated gadgets that can even emboss names and numbers on blank credit cards. There are websites that even offer blank magnetic cards also,” he added.