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Two Nigerians arrested in Pune for cloning ATM cards and cheating a person of Rs 92,000
The accused were arrested within 24- hours and produced before the local court which remanded them in police custody
The Kondhwa police in a joint operation with the cyber cell of Pune police have arrested two Nigerian nationals for allegedly cheating a city-based person to the tune of Rs 92,000 on Friday. The accused were arrested within 24- hours and produced before the local court which remanded them in police custody.
According Sunil Phulari, deputy commissioner of police ( North region ), the accused were identified as Irham Steven and his friend Ummu Ayan Mehboob,both residents of Majestic Society in Wadachi Wadi. The two were arrested by the detection branch as they were found to have fitted skimming machines to the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) where they carried out card cloning and cheated the victims. According to the police , the accused have allegedly cloned ATM cards of at least 50 persons.
Phulari further said that the police obtained the images from the Closed circuit television (CCTV) footage of the respective ATM where the fraud took place and launched a manhunt to arrest the accused. Acting on credible information a team of Kondhwa police station detection branch officials under the guidance of police inspector Anil Patil made the arrests. The police have recovered laptops, cameras, pen drives, glue, dummy ATM cards , a net dongle and five mobile handsets from their possession.
According to the police, Steven was arrested in a similar case in 2017 and was later acquitted by the court in the said case. The police have appealed to the citizens to lodge cases against the accused if they have been cheated in the similar modus operandi.
Phulari added that the residents of Katraj,Bibvewadi, Undri, Pisoli and Gokulnagar must change their ATM Personal Identification Number (PIN) as the accused operated and executed their operations in the said areas during the past couple of months. Further investigation is being done by the detection branch of the Kondhwa police station. The duo have been booked under IPC 420 and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.
