Pondy police arrest one more suspect in interstate ATM fraud

PUDUCHERRY: The Puducherry CBCID arrested one of the accused in the multi-crore interstate ATM

fraud

and skimming racket in Chennai on Wednesday. The arrested, R Chandruji, 28, from Solai Nagar, Muthialpet, who was absconding for almost three months after

police

busted the racket in April this year. The agency has arrested 15 people, seized cash, equipment, movable and immovable properties worth Rs 1 crore.



Senior superintendent of police, Karaikal, Rahul Alwal told reporters that Chandruji, was going to several places including Coimbatore, Pune, Bengaluru and recently New Delhi to avoid being captured but was traced and in Chennai. The accused confessed to the crime revealing that he supplied point of sale (PoS) machines to other the accused in the crime.

Alwal while explaining their modus operandi said, “They used to buy the data of credit/debit

cards

online from organized gangs across the globe ($4 per card), make fake credit/debit cards with the data and swipe the fake credit/debit cards on the PoS to swindle money from the credit or debit cardholders accounts.” He added that the gangs mostly target the cards of foreign banks, which do not have security facilities like one-time password and SMS alerts to alert the customers on online financial transactions using credit/debit cards.

He said that they have identified 140 victims from many countries including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Sweden, Italy and India. The agency will seek the custody of Chandruji to probe further.

The agency had arrested V Balaji, 26, from Lawspet, a computer technical assistant at Pondicherry University, S Jayachandran alias Chandru, 30, from Murungapakkam, R Kamal, 28, from Cuddalore district, J Saravanan alias Sham, 27, from Kolathur, Chennai, a government medical officer at Kirumampakkam primary health centre Vivek Ananth, 30, from Mudaliarpet, Ganesan, 33, from Kurumampet, proprietor of Lingam Photo Studio, A Sivakumar, 30, from Gopalankadai, proprietor of SP Sports Centre, K Daniel Sundar Singh, 33, from Shanthi Nagar, proprietor of Mariya Churidhars and Nebula Salwars, Abdul Samad, Sathiya, Manichandar, A Peter, 38, from Tirupur, S Dhinesh, 33, from Coimbatore and Irfan Rahman, 33 from Kolathur, Chennai and Sudhakar.