Puducherry: In yet another breakthrough, police have arrested a government doctor in connection with the interstate ATM fraud and skimming racket in Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.
The arrested was identified as Vivek, 30, from Muthialpet who is working in a primary health centre at Kirumapakkam Puducherry.
The crime and intelligence wing of the territorial police have already arrested four persons who were allegedly involved in withdrawing money using fake ATM cards.
The arrested persons include Balaji, a resident of Lakshmi Nagar at Lawspet, Jayachandran, a resident of Middle Street, Murungapakkam, R. Kamal, from Cuddalore and J. Saravanan alias Sham from Kolathur, Chennai. Balaji, an engineering graduate, was working as a computer technical assistant at Pondicherry University on a contract basis.
Vivek, an MBBS graduate, was arrested based on the confession of J. Saravanan. The police has also seized skimmer machines, swiping machines and '40 lakh from the arrested doctor. The police had earlier seized '4 lakh, 44 grams of gold, a car, a motorcycle, 19 POS devices, two magnetic strip readers, a computer, eight fake ATM cards, 13 ATM cards of banks, nine bank passbooks and property documents.
The accused admitted that the stolen amount was being transferred to his account directly and he will be getting a 30 per cent share of the total amount.
The interstate ATM fraud case shook the Union Territory where it is known that amount to the tune of Rs 1 crore was transferred to different accounts using fake ATM cards.
The police said that the modus operandi of the gang was they would install cameras at the ATM centres and collect ATM card data from the skimmers fixed to the machines. Fake ATM cards were manufactured using magnetic strip
reader machines and the amount was transferred to various accounts by
swiping fake cards on
POS devices procured through their associates on ICQ app, a messenger service. As it is revealed that more persons are involved in the case the police suspect overseas link in the case.
The hi-tech debit card fraud was busted by a special team of CBCID headed by inspector Palanibel and sub-inspector U. Vijayakumar.
