KOLKATA: Fifteen months after a
Romanian
gang struck fear in Kolkatans by cloning debit cards at ATMs in south and central Kolkata and withdrew lakhs from different accounts, two of the three accused Romanian nationals named in one of the FIRs have pleaded guilty in a local city court.
Accordingly, they have been sentenced to imprisonment for six months and fined Rs 40,000. Robert George and Marianu Alin have been found guilty under IPC charges pertaining to criminal conspiracy (120B), cheating (420), forgery (468), using as genuine a forged document (471) and attempting to commit offence (511) and under the provisions of Section 241 of CrPC.
The third and main accused, Laurentiu Caius, will face trial. The anti-bank fraud section of detective department had pursued the case after it was lodged at the Hare Street police station.
On April 19, 2018, the chief manager of
Punjab National Bank’s Brabourne Road branch had lodged a complaint that a skimming device had been fixed at the branch ATM. Officers of bank fraud section found the skimming device fixed to the card slot of the ATM and a pinhole camera was also found fixed to capture the secret PIN of customers.
Caius was apprehended by taking help from CCTV footage at the ATM counter and subsequent footages collected from the traffic control room. Caius admitted that he, along with associate Adrian Lupu, had come to Kolkata and fixed the devices to ATMs to clone cards of bank customers.
A prolonged interrogation revealed the involvement of two more associates. Accordingly a team was sent to New Delhi from where George and Alin were arrested. Lupu is still at large.
After completion of investigation, police submitted the chargesheet against all the four accused persons within 90 days and a date was fixed for framing charges. On Friday, when charge was framed against the three accused persons before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court, Alin and George pleaded guilty before the start of trial.
“This was a case of attempted fraud and cloning of bank cards where no monetary loss had taken place. But, we managed to keep the foreign nationals in custody and get a conviction,” said joint CP (crime) Murlidhar Sharma.