How your discarded credit, debit card goes from ragpicker to fraudster

Next time you think of discarding an old debit or credit card make sure to destroy it to the extent that it can never be reused Merely cancelling the card will not do as fraudsters come up with ever more ingenious ways to loot others mdash the Dadar police proved this with the arrest of a Byculla conman who would collect discarded cards and then activated them with fresh user data siphoning off lakhs from unsuspecting victimsAlso Read Trio paid Rs 4 lakh bill at Mumbai 5star with stolen credit card detailsCops caught Nasir Usman Gani Ansari redhanded as he was withdrawing money using a bogus cardThe accused Nasir Ansari 38 lives at a transit camp in Byculla with his wife and two children He is the coowner of a shoe manufacturing unit and although he earned decent profits from the business he had allegedly been moonlighting as a drug peddler for the past three years Four months ago it was while he was dealing that he met the mastermind of the credit card racket who taught him how to make a killing out of inactive cardsAnsari was on the police radar since December when he was caught on CCTV withdrawing cash from an ATM in ChemburModus operandildquoThe accused would keep in contact with ragpickers and pickpockets across the city and buy stolen or discarded credit and debit cards from them for Rs 50 to 100 The mastermind had given him a Data Reader Machine DRM and a laptop and taught him how to activate the cardsrdquo said Assistant Police Inspector Deepali Kulkarni of Dadar police stationRead Story Fake credit card racket foiledThe police recovered this Data Reader Machine and laptop from him as well as 30 bogus credit cardsAnsari would connect the laptop to the DRM and swipe the dummy cards erasing all the old data on them He would then swipe the cards again to upload data belonging to a completely different user The mastermind had provided Ansari with a whole list of users and their card details along with the ATM PIN numbers The police are yet to confirm how the racketeers got hold of confidential card details of the victimsBut it wasnrsquot just the gadget that was clever the conmen had thought of everything Ansari would use the cards to make withdrawals around midnight so that even if the victims received notification they wouldnrsquot be able to respond in time The timing was also clever for one other reason mdash if Ansari withdrew the maximum daily amount just before midnight and then waited for five to ten minutes he could then make another withdrawal which would be counted as the next dayrsquos transactionAnsari had been on the police radar since December when he was caught on CCTV at a Chembur ATM making withdrawals using fake cardsAnsari had made at least 25 such transactions in the past four months with each transaction siphoning off about R1 lakh from the victims But his luck eventually ran outArrestAnsari was on the police radar since December when he fraudulently withdrew cash from an ATM in Chembur The local police forwarded his CCTV images to ATMs across the city so on Monday when Ansari entered the IDBI ATM opposite Siddhivinayak temple around 1155 pm the security guard instantly recognised himAlso Read Man steals houseguests debit card swipes Rs 86 lakh with itAnsari withdrew R50000 with the help of one of the bogus cards and returned to withdraw the same amount again at 1205 amMeanwhile the ATM guard called a watchman at another IDBI ATM behind the temple and warned him about the conman Even as they were talking on the phone Ansari arrived at the second ATM Hearing this the first guard immediately ran out to the cops outside Siddhivinayak and told them about the crime The cop told the guard to hop onto his bike and they reached the second ATM to catch Ansari redhanded as he was making a withdrawal ldquoLuckily the security guard manning the ATM centre had seen the images of Ansari and identified him at first glance He alerted the cops and a team rushed to the spot and arrested Ansari redhandedrdquo said API KulkarniNetworkThe police believe that Ansarirsquos arrest is just the tip of the iceberg as they suspect this might turn out to be an international racket The cops suspect there are many more working for the mastermind like Ansari who might be located all over the city or the countryldquoAll the communication in the network has been done through Internet calling At present it is difficult to ascertain the exact location of the mastermind Unless Ansari is interrogated in detail it will be difficult to establish the size of the syndicate We also have to find the details of the ragpickers and the pickpockets in the caserdquo said an officer from Dadar police station