Thiruvananthapuram: In the last few days, customers in Thiruvananthapuram were shocked to find their money missing from bank accounts.
Some of them alerted the city police after they started receiving withdrawal messages on their phones. Most of the cases were reported by those who used an SBI ATM at Althara junction in Vellayambalam area.
For a while, this baffled the Kerala police, until they scanned CCTV footage and identified a suspect who could presumably be involved in a hi-tech ATM robbery racket. In one such footage, a man was seen installing an electronic device fitted with a camera inside the smoke detector tool, to get pin codes and card details of customers.
According to police, a skimmer device, which looked like a cover — and hence difficult to identify — was placed inside the machine next to the card holder. Once the card was inserted, the device collected the details. On the ATM was a camera that looked like a smoke detector, but had hard drive and batteries inside that could run for 20-30 hours.
The police are now probing the case from every angle, and have zeroed in on three foreign nationals, who are suspected to be the key players behind the robbery. A team of top police officers, including ADGP B Sandhya, Range IG Manoj Abraham and cyber and technical experts visited the ATM on Tuesday, and found the suspected electronic device.
One of the officers said they would now seek the help of Interpol to nab the criminals.
"It is a part of international cyber crime. The gang members are believed to be involved in cloning cards. So far we have received complaints from 16 people who lost about Rs 2.5 lakh to the fraudsters on Sunday," sources in the Kerala police department said.
Preliminary inquiry revealed that the cash was withdrawn from an ATM in Mumbai. "It seems the fraudsters cloned the card and withdrew the cash in Mumbai," a police source said.
One such customer, who was duped of thousands of rupees, said, "The first SMS alert told me I had lost Rs 5,000. A few minutes later, I got another message that said I had lost Rs 4,000 more. After that I kept losing Rs 10,000. In all, I lost Rs 45,000. I tried to get in touch with the bank, but could not, as it was a holiday.I finally went to a cyber cell and lodged a complaint".
City Police Commissioner G Sparjan Kumar told PTI that as many as 22 people have, so far, lodged complaints.
(With inputs from PTI)
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