Three held for debit card fraud

KOLKATA: Three persons, including a Nigerian and an Anglo-Indian, were arrested from Mumbai on Wednesday, allegedly for forging a debit card of a professor of Uttarbanga Krishi Viswavidyalaya and withdrawing money from his account.
The detective department of Kolkata Police arrested Md Asif, 37, Emannuel Okpara, a Nigerian, and the kingpin of the gang and an Anglo-Indian, Allan Antony Mascarnas, from Mumbai and is bringing them to Kolkata on transit remand."Mumbai Police arrested the trio in a different case and when we saw their photographs, we knew that they had been responsible for withdrawing money from the professor's account. We then asked Mumbai Police for their custody," said joint commissioner of police (detective department), Pallab Kanti Ghosh.
On December 5, 2013, Prof. Soumendra Chakraborty lodged a complaint at Kasba police station that Rs 40,000 had been withdrawn from his account through three transactions in one day. Kasba police handed over the case to the detective department earlier this month. The department's cyber crime cell tracked the transactions to SBI's Vasai and Khandeshwar branches near Thane in Mumbai. After tracking the ATMs of that area, the cyber cell got the photographs of the suspects.
According to police, Chakraborty went to Mumbai in November to attend an IIT seminar. He had paid the bills in an ice-cream parlour through his debit card and from there, his card was cloned. The criminals withdrew the money from three different ATMs with the cloned card.