By Raju Vernekar
Pune, Oct 8:
Three persons were arrested on charges of stealing money using skimmer from the ATM machine of the ICICI Bank located opposite Crown Bakery at Sinhgad in Pune on Wednesday.
The accused have been identified as: Vishwajit Chhatri(33), residing at Khar Danda, Mumbai, Prakash Shetty(46), residing at Dahisar, Mumbai and Faizi Altaf Raza(43), residing at Tilak Colony, Ambernath (Thane district)
The racket was unearthed when Swati Mandhre (39), a resident of Anand Nagar, Sinhgad Road received a message on 30 September that an amount of Rs. 40,000 was withdrawn from her account. She had withdrawn Rs 10,000 from her account on 26 September. Having realised that she was duped, the lodged a complaint with police.
The police using their own sources maintained a vigil in the area and arrested the accused from Balewadi area. The accused admitted to have stolen money in similar way earlier too.
The operation was carried out by the team comprising PSI Kiran Aute(Cyber branch), Police Naik Deepika Mohite, Constables-Shirish Gawade, Anil Pundlik and Somnath Bhorde.
ATM skimming is a theft of card information, where a small device, known as a skimmer, is used to steal the information during a legitimate ATM transaction. As the card is swiped at the machine, the skimmer device captures the information stored on the card’s magnetic strip.
It may be recalled that there have been a couple of incidents of stealing money from ATMs of different banks in Pune last year. Similarly the police had nabbed some culprits involved in card cloning.
