Plastic money fraud: Two held for 'cloning' cards

A 28-year-old class eight school dropout and his associate were arrested for cloning and fraudulently using the credit and debit cards of several city banks in northwest Delhi, police said on Saturday.

A 28-year-old class eight school dropout and his associate were arrested for cloning and fraudulently using the credit and debit cards of several city banks in northwest Delhi, police said on Saturday.

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Meenu Chaudhary, DCP (northwest), said Rajesh Kumar, an ex-finance company executive residing in northeast Delhi's Shahdara and his friend Kamal, 26, who also lives in the same area, had made illegal purchases amounting to more than Rs 10 lakh through such cloned cards till date.

Rajesh was caught red-handed while attempting to use one such cloned debit card at an ATM machine in northwest Delhi's Adarsh Nagar on July 9, the police said.

"Rajesh was introduced to Kamal, a commission agent who used to deal in plastic money, by a customer whom Rajesh had helped finance a vehicle once. The two became friends and started cloning debit and credit cards through elementary computer knowledge," DCP Chaudhary said.

According to police, initially, the duo used to take the service of petrol pump employees who would hand-over card reading machines used there.

The said employee would swipe a particular customer's card on the said machine discreetly, before handing it over to Vipin who used to feed the said data on another inoperative debit/credit card with the help of a computer, police said.

"Then, those cards would be used for withdrawing cash and for shopping."

"The establishments where these fake credit cards were swiped are being identified. We appeal to the public to be more vigilant while using plastic money," DCP Chaudhary said adding six such cloned cards were recovered from Rajesh.