Hyderabad, March 24: Task Force sleuths on Monday busted an international credit card cloning racket and arrested five persons from Ranigunj in the city.
The accused used to steal confidential credit card data from foreigners and make clones of the cards by using it.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Task Force, VB Kamalasan Reddy told mediapersons that the gang collected credit card data of foreigners through a friend, Irfan, who has international contacts.
Team leader Mohd Ilyas used to transfer the stolen data onto the magnetic strip of another card using skimming tools.
Police arrested Ilyas, Mohd Sultan, Abdullah, Hyder Ali and Shaik in connection with the racket while Irfan is absconding. They seized eight cloned credit cards of various banks (local and international), Rs 4,000 cash, one magnetic card reader-writer, a computer and eight cell phones from them.
The accused lured shop-owners having credit card swiping machines by offering handsome commissions, the DCP said adding a huge loss was being caused to the genuine card holders and bankers across the globe.
The gang used some cloned credit cards at Ranigunj and other places and spent Rs 68,000. The scam was suspected to be running into lakhs of rupees, the DCP said.
Credit card cloning or “skimming’’ as it is popularly known is a technique by which genuine credit card details are copied onto a fake card.
The fraudsters targeted foreigners as their cards usually had a higher credit limit compared to the Indian cards. Further, detection of the fraud with those cards was also difficult.
Police advised the shopowners to compare the CVV numbers on the swiped slip and the credit card, which should be identical.
–Agencies