Think twice before taking help of strangers to withdraw money from ATM money dispensers as they might clone your debit card and take away money from your account. The word of caution comes from the Odisha Police after they arrested three men from Haryana who had defrauded with cloned debit cards without raising any suspicion.
The three accused, identified as Sanjeeb, Sumit and Kuldip, were arrested in a joint operation by the Bolangir and Titlagarh police. The trio was arrested after the complainant, Sabyasachi Panda, raised an alarm after one of the members of the gang tried to swipe Panda’s debit card on a small device on the pretext of helping him withdraw money from AXIS Bank ATM in Bolangir today.
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As per reports, Panda had withdrawn Rs 10,000 and his attempt to withdraw another Rs 10,000 failed. On the pretext of offering help, one of the accused, identified as Sumit, tried to insert Panda’s ATM card into a swipe machine the former was carrying.
“On being confronted by the complainant, Sumit threatened him and tried to escape from the place. However, the accused was overpowered and subsequently, our joint police teams managed to nab two of his associates,” said T Bag, Bolangir SDPO.
According to Bag, the three accused used to steal money from the accounts of people by cloning their cards through skimming machines. The gang members have sound technical knowledge. They would collect data from the debit cards of people by using another machine connected via Bluetooth. With the information, they used to prepare a cloned card, Bag said.
“The gang members would manage to obtain the secrete PIN number and later withdraw money using the cloned cards,” Bag added.
Senior police officials said that two skimmer machines, two ATM cards, one mobile phone and Rs 17000 cash has been seized from the accused, Sumit. Similarly, 13 ATM (debit) cards, Rs 20,000 cash and two mobile phones have been seized from Kuldeep. Further investigation into the case is underway, police said.