HYDERABAD: In yet another case of data theft, the cybercrime wing of the Cyberabad police arrested a gang that had stolen credit card data belonging to the customers of the Bank of Baroda and the State Bank of India. They duped the customers under the pretext of activating a card, renewing, redeeming card points, etc.
They procured the data from executives working for the respective banks or from employees working in companies to whom banks had outsourced the work of field verification, customer care, etc.
“They used service-providing platforms like nobroker, magicbricks, housing.com to transfer money from credit cards to mule bank accounts,” said Cyberabad CP M. Stephen Raveendra.
The main accused Kafil Ahmed set up a call centre in Delhi and operated with the help of other accused persons.
One of the accused Virendra Singh is working as a customer care executive at Tech Mahindra in Noida which in turn works for the Bank of Baroda as a third party in the activation of the new cards and for solving queries. “He used to steal confidential customers’ data and sold that data in the market by charging up to Rs 20 per card. Mobiles are not allowed in the area where he works, but he sneaked in with his mobile phone, clicked pictures of customer data, and shared it with his clients,” Raveendra said.
Other accused members contributed by sharing similar data to Ahmed and also preactivated SIM cards and mule bank accounts for receiving money from the duped customers. Akash Nirwan, a former Vodafone employee, Vikas Puri works for Matrix and Astute, third-party verification companies, and Ateet Das also works for Astute Group.
