Coimbatore: In a significant breakthrough, a special police party has arrested a six-member gang allegedly involved in hacking bank accounts using skimmer device and robbed several lakh rupees from an ATM near Singanallur in Coimbatore suburb.
Police said, the cyber-crime special police team arrested the gang members near Krishnagiri and seized two costly cars including a BMW, 17 cell phones, laptops and fake ATM cards, besides 40 grams gold and a skimmer device from them.
As many as 15 account holders of a private bank were shocked on June 2, after they received ‘SMS alerts’ about money from their accounts being debited without their knowledge though the ATM cards were very much with them.
On receiving a complaint from the poor victims, a special team led by sub-inspector Sastha was deployed to nab the gang.
After collecting the CCTV camera footages from the ATM kiosk at Singanallur the special police team rushed to Bengaluru, based on a tipoff and arrested them near krishnagiri in the early hours of Saturday.
The miscreants were identified as Navashanthan, 29, Niranjan, 38, from Chennai, Tamil Arasan, 26, from Krishnagiri, Vaseem, 30, from Bengaluru, Kishore, 25, from Tiruchy and Manoharan, 19, from Tirupur.
During preliminary investigations the gang members admitted to the crime of robbing money from ATM near Singanallur; few weeks ago the gang had allegedly withdrawn Rs 19 lakh using fake debit cards made by them according to the data collected from the ATM using skimmer device and micro camera.The six members were also allegedly involved in similar ATM heists in neighboring states including Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry and Kerala. Police here have planned to apply to the appropriate court to take the accused into custody for further probe.
