Beware of ‘skimming’ before you swipe card

The Lucknow police has arrested three employees of a restaurant in Gomti Nagar for cloning debit/credit cards with skimming devices.

The three worked as agents for masterminds based in Bengaluru and Mumbai-based who would transfer the compromised data of card- holders onto fresh cards to make illegal transactions. Three complaints were made to the cyber cell in a short span and all of them led investigators to the same restaurant. Cops from the cyber cell carried out a search at the restaurant and found a skimming device installed on the card swiping machine.

The modus operandi for the fraud was simple. One of the three accused would take the portable machine to the customer’s table and would quietly take note of the PIN code entered. While the magnetic chip of the card would be copied on the skimmer attached discreetly to the swipe machine, PIN codes were saved in a diary along with the date and time of the swipe.

Lucknow SSP Rajesh Pandey said that a person visited the accused every fortnight to collect the skimmer and hand over a new one to facilitate the fraud. The exact quantum of fraud was yet to be ascertained but the three have confessed to have duped more than 80 customers in the past four months. Using the PIN, they used the cloned cards to withdraw a large sum far away from the city. In return, the masterminds would pay `1,400 for complete details of each card to the three agents. A skimming device and diary containing four digit PIN codes was recovered from the group.