The Cyberabad Cyber Crime police in Hyderabad on Monday arrested three natives of Bihar for stealing debit card details of around 200 residents of Shadnagar in Ranga Reddy district in Telangana.
The trio stole sensitive debit card information like card number, CVV, pin number from their victims while they used the cards, a scamming technique called ‘Shoulder Surfing’. The Cyber Crime police said that it received the first complaint on October 10 from an ICICI bank card holder from the Shadnagar branch, who was cheated of Rs 3,89,500 on September 23. The victim lost the amount in multiples of Rs 10,000 within minutes.
Based on the complaint and the ensuing investigation, police found that a high number of cases had been reported from in an around Shadnagar, and more specifically at an ATM kiosk next to the Shadnagar bus stop. After reviewing the ATM CCTV footage of the victims at ATM kiosks, the police zeroed in on three individuals.
The main accused in the case, 19-year-old Manish Kumar, a tech-savvy school dropout working as a plumber in the locality. The police said that Manish learnt about several such techniques besides Shoulder Surfing, which included online shopping in e-commerce websites without using an OTP and online applications where debit card numbers can be validated, all from YouTube. The second and third accused in the case, Vinod Kumar (18) and Manjesh Kumar (21), were taught about Shoulder Surfing by Manish.
The trio used to visit ATM kiosks and would stand next to debit card users. After noting down the card details, they checked the card details in an online application to find out the validity of the card. Once the card details were confirmed, the police said that they would call the bank’s customer care to know about the account balance of the customer.
Depending on the balance amount, they would start placing orders on e-commerce sites like Flipkart, ShopClues, BigBasket, Amazon and other sites that accepted cards without OTP. They would also load their victims' money into e-wallets like XtraREcharge to earn phone talk time and book online travel tickets.
The orders placed for products on the e-commerce websites would be on different addresses in and around Shadnagar, Shamshabad and also in other cities across India. Once they received the products, they would resell it to a third party for lower prices.
The police seized 18 mobile phones, 5 sim cards and a net cash of Rs 1,10,000 from the accused.