Pune: About ten days before we reported a case of an unidentified waiter from the Madhuban Bar and Restaurant in Bhosari area cloning debit cards of three customers and withdrawing nearly Rs 1 lakh from an ATM in Patna, Bihar. Another such case has now been reported from Waghjai Restaurant and Bar at Vishal Nagar, Pimple Nilakh area where two customers have been cheated by the same modus operandi.
An unidentified waiter, on the pretext of paying the bill amount, took ATM card from the two customers and cloned the data. About Rs 54 thousand have been withdrawn from an ATM in Ranchi, Jharkhand in this case.
In the Pimple Nilakh case, the complaint has been filed by Dayanand Prakash Kirolkar (30), a resident of Golden Treasure society in Punawale at the Wakad police station.
Based on his complaint, the suspect has been booked under section 379 (punishment for theft) of the Indian Penal Code and section 43 (penalty and compensation for damage to computer, computer system, etc; unauthorised access), 66 (punishment for computer related offences), 66C (punishment for identity theft) and 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
According to police, complainant Kirolkar had gone to hotel Waghjai for having dinner on the night of January 7. He had handed over his debit card to the waiter to pay the bill for the food. Later, an amount of Rs 38000 was withdrawn using the debit card from an ATM in Ranchi in Jharkhand. Similar fraudulent transactions happened with Aakash Rameshwar Khokar who lost Rs 16000 in the scam.
Earlier, Umesh Devidar Anvekar (35), a resident of Shree Nagar in Pimple Gurav, had filed a complaint on January 2 at Bhosari police station stating that during the period of December 4 to 15, 2020, he and his friend had gone to Madhuban hotel for dinner when the suspect pretending to be a waiter in the hotel approached them. Anvekar and his friend handed over their debit card to the suspect for paying the bill. The suspect took the debit card and cloned it.
The suspect then used the stolen data of the debit card and made another card. By using the clone card, the suspect withdrew money from an ATM at Patna in Bihar. The complaint states that along with Anvekar, two other persons have also lost money to fraudulent transactions of similar pattern.
Anvekar lost Rs 50 thousand, while another victim Balasaheb Ganpatrao Najan has lost Rs 25 thousand and Praveen Bapu Sonar has lost Rs 19500 in this debit card cloning fraud so far. Police Inspector (Crime) Kadam from Bhosari police station is investigating the case.
Cloning, also known as skimming, refers to the copying of credit or debit card information using software or an electronic device, in order to gain unauthorized access to your account. Another variation of this fraud is carried out using a scanning device at a point of sale. The employee uses the cloning device to scan your card before swiping it at the till. It can easily go unnoticed by you, especially if the billing counter is not in your line of sight.