Former employees of multiplex arrested for cloning cards at Gurgaon malls

The accused are suspected to have cloned around 45 to 50 cards of customers and siphoned off an amount of Rs20 to Rs25 lakhs of customers who visited the theatres located on two malls on MG Road, the police said on Friday.

Four persons, including three former employees of PVR cinemas in Gurgaon, were arrested by Gurgaon police for allegedly cloning credit and debit cards of customers who visited the theatres.

The accused in police custody. (Parveen Kumar/HT)

The accused are suspected to have cloned around 45 to 50 cards of customers and siphoned off an amount of Rs20 to Rs25 lakhs of customers who visited the theatres located on two malls on MG Road, the police said on Friday.

The accused have been identified as Ajay Raghav, Sanjay Jat, Rahul Yadav and Sonajeet. They took note of ATM pin numbers of customers and later used it to withdraw cash from the cards cloned by them. Raghav, Jat, and Yadav worked in the mulitplexes.

Two ATM card readers, one card cloning machine, one laptop and few cloned cards were recovered from the accused. The accused have been sent on three days police remand for further questioning.

The machines are easily available online at a very low price, police said.

A few days earlier, a similar racket was unearthed in Delhi where an employee of Farzi cafe in Connaught Place was caught by police for cloning cards.

“Raghav got to know that police was after him so he had shifted his accommodation. He is married and used the stolen money for family’s expenses,” said Kuhar.

Raghav’s arrest and unraveling of the gang came after a Gurgaon resident Dhrishti Bhasin complained at Sector 56 police station that someone had withdrawn Rs50,000 from her account using a debit card on May 25.

The matter was referred to the Cyber crime cell, which formed a team under cell in-charge inspector Anand Kumar that started identifying the ATMs from where the cash was being withdrawn.

“After sustained investigation, the police was able to identify Sanjay Jat, a resident from Alwar in Rajasthan, and arrested him from his brother’s house in south city 2,” said Kuhar.

On questioning, Jat spilled the beans and this led to the arrest of others including Raghav, Sonajeet who lives in DLF phase 4, and Rahul Yadav who is from Kosli in Rewari.

It is being suspected that there are more members involved in the fraud, who used to steal ATM pin numbers from different locations. Police is also on the look out of a person, who had taught card cloning to Jat, which led to his entry into this trade.

The accused have been arrested in a case registered at sector 56 police station under section 379 (theft), 420 (fraud), and 120b (criminal conspiracy) of IPC and section 66 of the IT Act.

A representative of the PVR cinemas said that officials authorised to speak to the media were not available.