Sri Lankans nabbed for credit card cloning racket in India

Indian police today busted an international fake credit card cloning racket after they arrested two Sri Lankan nationals in Bangalore.

The arrested have been identified as Mahendra Karunaraj and Ashwini Kumar, both Sri Lankan nationals but settled in Bangalore and Madurai respectively, City Police Commissioner Raghavanedra Auradkar told reporters.

Auradkar said Karunaraj used to get credit card data through emails from his childhood friend now settled in France for a price. After receiving the card data, Karunaraj used to dispatch it to Ashwin based in Madurai for printing, Auradkar said.

“Ashwin used to print cards on empty plastic cards brought from Malaysia by using encoding and embossing machines,” he said.

According to initial assessment, the duo might have cheated to the extent of Rs 10 lakh, Auradkar said.

The accused used the fake cards to purchase goodies from mercantile establishments instead of transacting online, Auradkar said. “They did not buy anything online since they did not know pin code of original cardholders and they used the fake cards only once,” he said.

The accused also used to sell the bought items in the streets of Chennai and Bangalore, Auradkar said.

The seized articles included 50 credit cards of various banks, two laptops, one pen drive, encoder and embossing machines, Auradkar said.

Karunaraj, who has studied upto 12th standard, was committing such crime since 2007 and arrested in Sri Lanka, Auradkar said.

After serving the jail term he started Onion and Textile business but when he incurred loss he again started indulging in producing fake credit cards and make purchases, he added, PTI reports.