Fraudsters using cloned cards abroad to avoid detection

Recently, a complaint was lodged at Parliament Street police station in New Delhi by a home ministry official. The complaint was with regards to her card being cloned and used at an apparel store in the US.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) official alleged in her complaint, that on June 7 she received several messages of transactions from different US-based stores between 1.35am and 2.09am. Many OTPs along with few alerts for the transactions were also sent to her mobile number. The total value of the transactions was Rs 67,000. The complainant informed the police that since the transactions took place late at night, she was unable to block the same.

The woman said that her card was temporarily blocked for a few minutes, probably because the bank might have realised that her security details were compromised and they initiated the process of blocking her card after a few transactions. She further added that after a while, she also received some messages asking for permission to withdraw money from her account. She is of the opinion that the culprit must be trying to withdraw more money from the card.

The last time when she used her card was with her mobile phone service provider and a shop in Connaught Place. As per a report in The Times of India, police suspect that the crooks use a device which is mainly imported from china by the name of “skimmer” for such practices. This device is fitted to a card swiping machine which in turn copies the card details while it is being swiped and stores it in an internal memory unit. The details acquired can then be used for online transactions.