Police bust credit card scam led by Lankan

The next time you swipe your ATM card to withdraw money, a thin-film device sitting smugly in the card slot may be stealing your data. The next day, your card could be cloned.

Greater Chennai Police on Thursday busted a gang that used slim skimmers stuck to ATMs to steal data, including PIN, and clone cards. The gang withdrew a total of Rs 30 lakhs from accounts of scores of people. Leading the gang was B Umesh alias Jatti, a 27-year-old Sri Lankan national who was arrested on similar charges in May 2010. Umesh was on bail.

Other members of the gang were V Divyan, 24, S Rajendran, 49, C Udhya Kumar, 39, and S Jayakumar, 23. Divyan and Rajendran are also Sri Lankan citizens.

Police have recovered more than 30 fake credit and debit cards, besides equipment including skimmers, encoder machines and laptops.

The gang would sneak into unguarded ATMs around midnight and attach the skimmers to the card slot. In a couple of days, after several bank customers had used the ATM, they would return to take back the skimmer which had by then copied data of the users’ cards. Times of India