Card cloning gang busted by Delhi Police Crime Branch
Aug 17, 2022
New Delhi [India], August 17 : The Crime Branch of Delhi Police arrested members of a card cloning gang on Wednesday while conducting raids in the districts of Hissar, Haryana and Sultanpuri, Delhi based on the intel collected by them.
A total of 12 credit cards along with a skimmer were recovered after conducting the raid.
Police have identified the gang members as Kuldeep, Dharambir and Sunil. Dharambir aged 45, is a resident of Hissar district. Sunil Kumar is a resident of Sultanpuri, Delhi while Kuldeep is also a resident of Hissar district.
NR-II unit of the Crime Branch had received inputs about the card cloning gang which was operating in Delhi-NCR as well as in other states.
NR-II unit of the Crime Branch had information of the gang which was cheating people by swapping and cloning their debit cards after a senior citizen became the target of the syndicate while the transaction was done by him at an ATM kiosk, and an FIR was registered to probe the matter.
An FIR under IPC section 420/120B/34 was registered in Janakpuri police station, which was later transferred to the crime branch for investigation.
The team analysed the CCTV footage related to the incident and local sources were activated to identify the persons in the CCTV footage. To get more information about the people involved, footage related to similar cases was also analysed.
After the identification of the persons involved, intelligence was developed about their present whereabouts and raids were conducted on the possible hideouts of the culprits. The team was able to arrest Dharambir and Sunil after conducting the raids.
During the interrogation of the arrested accused persons, they revealed that Kuldeep is the kingpin of the gang. The team acted on this information and conducted raids at the residential address as well as other possible hideouts without any luck.
Records of the arrest of such criminals in Delhi and neighbouring states were also being monitored in connection to this case regularly. Input about Kuldeep was received through the ICJS portal (Inter-operable Criminal Justice System), in which it was found that Kuldeep has already been arrested in a case with the same modus operandi in Himachal Pradesh.
The police then took him on five days remand as his arrest was affected by the present case. Further investigation is in progress. Based on the recovery of credit/debit cards from Kuldeep and his associates arrested earlier (Dharambir and Sunil), it is expected that many more cases would be worked out with the interrogation of the accused.
They specifically kept a watch on ATMs which didn't have a guard. Their target would be the aged, less literate and people facing difficulty in using the ATM. After ascertaining the potential target, the members of the gang used to approach the kiosk one by one, crowding and confusing the victim.
Then they either changed the debit/credit card or swiped the same through the skimmers (device for cloning the machine). After that, they used to leave the spot one by one to withdraw money and distribute it among themselves.
