Mumbai Crime: Card-cloning racket kingpin arrested

The five gang members arrested last month

Mumbai Crime Branch's Property Cell has arrested the kingpin of a large network of fraudsters, who had been robbing foreigners and NRIs by cloning their debit/credit cards since 2013.

The arrested accused has been identified as R Manoj Kumar, who was staying in Malaysia. After the racket was busted last month, investigators had zeroed in on his name and issued a lookout notice at domestic and international airports. After Kumar landed at Chennai airport on Monday, airport authorities informed the crime branch, which then sent a team to Chennai to take him in custody.

When contacted, DCP (crime branch) Dilip Sawant confirmed the arrest and said, "We have to interrogate the accused to get details on how he managed to steal card data."

On June 20, the police had arrested five of Kumar's gang members to whom he used to send the stolen card data via email. They would then copy the same onto blank cards and transfer money from foreign bank accounts into theirs in India.

The five have been identified as Mohammed Hasan Eqbal Shaikh, 44, Mukesh Raju Sharma, 40, Zuber Nissar Sayed, 35, and Abu Bakar Shaikh Ghanvilkar, 45, all Mumbai residents, and Fahim Bashir Shora of J&K.

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