Three held for ‘stealing’ millions from ATMs

MUZAFFARABAD: An executive magistrate in the lakeside city of Mirpur on Sunday remanded in police custody a three-member gang allegedly involved in fraudulent withdrawal of cash through cloned automated teller machine (ATM) cards.

The suspects – two from Lahore and one from Sahiwal – were apprehended by the Mirpur police “red-handed” on Saturday evening, SSP Irfan Saleem told Dawn.

The gang would install a skimmer (a small device to capture credit and debit card information) as well as a hidden camera in the ATM kiosks to record personal identification numbers (PINs).

Later, they would prepare cloned ATM cards and draw money from the accounts by using that PIN, added Mr Saleem.

He said recently the police received information that a small device had been spotted in the ATM kiosk of a private bank in the city’s Nangi Chowk.

The police launched a vigil of the kiosk and took three people into custody at 6pm on Saturday when they reached there and attempted to remove the device, he added.

Apart from a laptop, a skimmer and a hidden camera, the police also confiscated a car in their use.

The SSP said during the preliminary investigations the suspects disclosed that they had drawn millions of rupees by ATM skimming in different cities, from Bhara Kahu (Islamabad) to Mirpur to Multan.

In just two such attempts in Mirpur in December last year, they had drawn around Rs1.7 from the accounts of two banks, he said.

The SSP said on being pinpointed by the accused, he sent a police team to Lahore on Saturday evening which recovered an ATM card cloning machine, several cloned ATM cards and other equipment from the “office” of the suspects there.

The suspects, who were identified as Shahid Gillani and Mohammad Bilal of Lahore and Sajjad Alam of Sahiwal, were given in the police custody for further investigations for one week.

Source: Dawn