City police today claimed to have busted a credit card cloning racket and arrested four persons including a sales executive working with State Bank of India and a businessman.
The accused Varun Sadh, who runs several garments shops in the city, and sales executive Nani Babu, along with two others allegedly indulged in “stealing” credit card data of customers using a skimmer machine and swapped the same at Varun’s shops without purchasing any material, police said.
The Central Crime Station (CCS)–a wing of Hyderabad Police–had taken up the investigation following a complaint from SBI Card Division that one customer’s name figured in the CIBIL’s list of defaulters even though he did not have any SBI credit card and was receiving calls to clear his dues.
According to police, the accused misused the data and prepared fake credit cards. During investigation, the police seized 80 credit cards of different banks, one computer set,one skimmer machine and 12-swapping machines from them.
Explaining the modus operandi, police said Varun would collect stolen/missing cards from different persons, swap them at his shops and pay commission to such persons.
He also used a skimmer machine to steal credit card data of customers and created 17 fake credit cards, they added.
Nani Babu and another accused K Raju used to exchange the data of the customers whose credit card applications are rejected and used the same in the name of different customers without the knowledge of original customers, police said.
The duo then swapped credit cards at Varun’s shops and collected commission from him and thus caused loss to SBI,police said.
——————————–PTI