4 arrested for credit card fraud

HYDERABAD: Cyber Crime police busted a credit card cloning gang and arrested four persons on Monday.

Police arrested Syed Jaber, a customer support executive at HSBC call center in Madhapur, R Krishna, K Venkatesh, workers at Prodduturi Services IOC Petrol Pump in Habsiguda and N Vasanth Kumar, a cashier at Ramanthapur filling station, near HPS at Ramanthapur. Their associate Omorye from Nigeria is absconding.

According to police, Syed Jaber, an MBA graduate from MJ College, presently working with the HSBC call centre is the main accused in the case. As the salary was not sufficient to support his lavish lifestyle, Jaber, who deals with credit and debit card transactions of customers every day, carried out some research on the internet about card cloning, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Central Crime Station (CCS), L K V Ranga Rao said.

While he was looking for credit card cloning related websites, Jaber came in contact with Nigerian Omorye at an online chat community. Jaber purchased data of international credit and debit cards from Omorye and also purchased a skimmer and two card readers. Using the skimmers Jaber began preparing cloned cards and started making online purchases. He gave two portable skimmers to the other culprits and collected customers’ credit card data.

Based on a complaint lodged by a victim, N Sridhar, who had swiped his card at Habsiguda petrol filling station, the cybercrime sleuths had registered a case recently and arrested the gang from their houses on Monday. Police recovered six high-end Samsung mobiles worth Rs 1.5 lakh, a laptop, a magnetic strip reader-cum-writer, two mini skimmers and Rs 50,000 cash from the culprits.