Chennai: On Friday, the central crime branch (CCB) officials arrested a five-member gang for a phishing fraud, where the gang stole lakhs of rupees from international cardholders using cloned credit cards. The police estimate that the gang to have swindled Rs12 lakh from various accounts over the past one year. On Wednesday, a representative from Axis Bank approached city police after it was found that funds were swindled from one of their customers based in California.
The gang’s latest purchase using a cloned card, an LED TV from a showroom in Kolathur, helped police to pin them down. It is also learnt that the gang had made phony debit cards and swindled money from ATM after hacking through their accounts, the police said.
The gang members were identified as A. Anandan alias Reuben (45), S. Thishok Kumar (28), S. Dineshkumar (27), K. Krishnadas alias Murugan (52) and S. Tasleen (24). Except for Tasleen, all others were Sri Lankan nationals and arrested from their hideouts in Madipakkam, a southern suburb in Chennai. Kingpin Reuben was twice arrested earlier by the police for a similar crime.
Investigations with the gang revealed that they had accomplices in the US who would steal account and card details of international credit/debit card-holders and pass these on to the gang operating from Chennai. The police seized over 100 cards, an encoder machine and an SUV brought from the swindled money.
kingpin was running drinking water biz while phishing
On the outside, 45-year-old A. Reuben, a Lankan national, was running a packaged drinking water business in Madipakkam. While inside his SUV, he and his gang were swindling money from credit card-holders.In the trade for three years now, Reuben was arrested by the Tallakulam police in Madurai and Thirumangalam in Chennai for similar offences.
At those times, he was involved only in stealing from domestic customers. Over time, he seems to have evolved and started swindling from international card-holders, an official said, adding that the CCB’s earlier crackdown on their network must have led them to target overseas customers.
The police said the gang used these cloned cards to buy everything - ranging from groceries to household appliances and one such instance recently led to their arrest.
In fact, the car was also bought using stolen money, the official said, adding Reuben along with his gang roamed around in the SUV and operated from inside the vehicle.
