Five Lankans held for ATM card racket

Five Sri Lankan nationals were arrested in India yesterday for the alleged involvement in a fake ATM card racket with a nation-wide network and Indian Rs 40.4 lakhs and a large number of fake cards seized from them, the police said.

The five, from Mannar district, told the police that they used the fake cards to withdraw money from ATMs with PIN numbers and other details made available by a gang based in Sri Lanka.

They also said they had a network throughout India. Antony Anandan, Pratap, Syed Abudhagir, Viyakumar and Ganapathy were produced before a Magistrate Court and remanded to judicial custody, the police said adding an application would be filed seeking their custody to unearth their links in other parts of the country.

The Police stumbled on the gang when woman Sub-Inspector Lokeswari questioned Ganapathy after seeing him scratching an ATM card in front of a State Bank of India ATM centre located in an isolated place in Chokkikulam, India.

During investigations, police found Ganapathy was carrying 20 ATM cards and also seized Rs.40,000. He told the police they got all details, including the PIN numbers, from a gang based in Sri Lanka.

Based on information provided by him about four of his associates operating in India, a team of policemen in plain clothes arrested them at Ring Road when they were about to shift a big carton of currency notes withdrawn by them from various ATMs from one car to another car, the police said.

The busting of the gang comes close on the heels of a major ATM fraud detected by the Bank Fraud wing of the Central Crime Branch in Chennai last month. The Police have arrested 15 persons in connection with the fraud in Chennai and surroundings, seized more than 1,000 fake ATM cards with which the gang had withdrawn an estimated more than Rs one crore over a period of time.