Police solve cyber fraud cases, 4 more held

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 10

The police today claimed to have solved the recent cyber fraud cases with the arrest of four petrol pump employees here. The case is said to have been cracked after thorough questioning of cyber thief Mukul, whose live-in partner Ramandeep Kaur had committed suicide at the Dugri police station a few days ago.

The accused have been identified as Ravinder Singh of Sandh village in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, who worked at the Bansal filling station, Dhuri railway line; Bikramjit Singh of Surti village in Kangra, who worked at the Bharat petrol pump, Samrala chowk; Shuban Vishkarma, who worked at a Reliance petrol pump in Dugri; and Davinder Kumar of New Agar Nagar here.

Additional DCP-II Sandeep Garg and ACP-Headquarters and Cyber Crime Rupinder Kaur Bhatti, who cracked the case, conducted a press conference today.

Garg said after Mukul was nabbed on August 5, the police had recovered several fake ID proofs from him, which he was using for shopping expensive things from malls and from online sites through cloned debit and credit cards.

“During Mukul’s questioning, the police came to know that he and his girlfriend, Ramandeep Kaur, was in touch with several petrol pump employees to whom they had given skimming devices to steal data of cash cards. Whenever any customer came to their petrol pumps for buying petrol or diesel, these employees used to swipe card in the skimming machines to steal the data,” Garg added.

The ADCP said by unearthing this racket, the police had solved 18 cases of cyber fraud, out of a total 28 cases reported in the past over two weeks. These cases mainly pertain to shopping from cards or withdrawing cash from ATMs and do not include cases in which money was transferred through net banking. The police are seriously working to crack those cases as well.

Expensive watches, shoes bought with cloned cards

Rupinder Kaur Bhatti, ACP, Cyber Crime, said after preparing the clones of ATM cards, Mukul used to buy expensive branded watches, shoes, clothes and other things. “We have recovered branded wrist watches, such as Rolex, Rado, and branded shoes which Mukul had purchased recently with the cloned cards,” the ACP added.

Workers charged Rs 800 per swipe to steal data

The arrested petrol pump employees were paid Rs 800 per swipe by Mukul. Once the card was swiped and PIN secretly recorded by an employee, he could claim Rs 800 from Mukul. ADCP II Sandeep Garg said the pump employees had been providing their services to Mukul for the past several months, and it could be possible that data of hundreds of cards was stolen by them through skimming devices. “So far, pump employees had prepared 79 clones of debit and credit cards. We have not recovered any skimming machines but we have enough evidence of Mukul’s connection with these pump employees. They were also in touch with Mukul over the phone and we have all records,” Garg revealed.

Police advice to residents

Whenever you visit a petrol pump or a shop, you should cautiously watch employees if they are swiping your debit/credit card on a skimming device, and always make sure that nobody is around when you enter the PIN on the machine. Criminals can’t withdraw money with cloned cards unless they have the secret PIN.

Stolen data of cards was sold outside Punjab

Since Mukul had loads of stolen data of debit and credits cards, he used to sell it to criminals in Delhi, Mumbai, Jharkhand and other state for huge sums. The price of stolen data was fixed as per the balance amount in the card.