This story is from December 17, 2019

Card cloning nurseries in 6 Pratapgarh villages: UP STF

More than 150 youths from six villages of Pratapgarh district are under scanner for their alleged involvement in cloning of debit and credit cards at ATMs to dupe bank customers.
Card cloning nurseries in 6 Pratapgarh villages: UP STF
Illustration used for representational purpose
ALLAHABAD: More than 150 youths from six villages of Pratapgarh district are under scanner for their alleged involvement in cloning of debit and credit cards at ATMs to dupe bank customers.
The Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttar Pradesh Police told TOI that Patulki, Badni, Bhadohi, Handaur, Basupur and Dahiyawa villages, which come under the jurisdiction of Jethwara and Mandhata police stations of the district, had turned into “nurseries of card cloning.”
So much so that police of Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat have sought the assistance of their counterparts in UP to bust the burgeoning racket.

Additional SP (STF) Neeraj Kumar Pandey said the Pratapgarh youths were trained by a gang based in Gaya district in Bihar. They learnt to target ATMs in rural and semi-urban areas as they have inadequate security, he said.
“We recently cracked four major cases of card cloning and investigations led us to these villages. The youths have access to special software, card scanner and cloning devices. The set-up costs between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh and is provide by the main gang in Bihar,” Pandey told TOI.
Elaborating the modus operandi of the gang, the STF officer said a bevy of gadgets such as laptops and smartphones as well as transport in the form of SUVs allowed the fraudsters to carry out seamless operations.

“They travel miles to find a target and never steal card details from one ATM kiosk more than twice. They enter kiosks on the pretext of helping customers and tamper with cards. A cloning device is pre-installed to collect the card data,” he said, adding that the gang members had amassed enough wealth to purchase flats in Lucknow, Noida and Ghaziabad.
The STF claimed to have stumbled upon a nationwide network of fraudsters who have duped more than a thousand people of their money using cloned cards.
Deputy SP (STF) Navendu Singh told TOI that six key members, including kingpin Nem Chandra Saroj, were nabbed within a span of two months. A huge cache of electronic devices, Rs 7.12 lakh in cash and over 100 bank cards were recovered from their possession.
DSP Singh added that Saroj and his accomplices transferred card data extracted from ATMs into laptops and used special machines to make a clone in less than a minute.
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About the Author
Kapil Dixit

Kapil Dixit is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Mass Communications. He has covered crime at regional as well as state level. His hobbies include reading, writing and meeting people with diverse interests.

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