Laptops, 26 cloned ATM cards seized from Romanians arrested in Chandigarh

The crime branch of Chandigarh police have recovered two laptops and 26 cloned ATM cards among the hi-tech devices used allegedly by the three Romanians arrested so far in relation with the card-cloning fraud in which many residents of the city have been duped of lakhs of rupees.

“The two laptops were used for transferring the stolen data and creating cloned ATMs. The 26 ATMs recovered from Attila Tuhos were the ones on which the data had been transferred and were ready to be used to withdraw money,” said Pawan Kumar, deputy superintendent of police (DSP) (crime), Chandigarh.

Police said they have also recovered six ATM keyboard cameras, three ATM card skimmer machines, three SD card adopters, an ATM magnetic skimmer device, one piece magnetic stripe card reader, 650 different ATM cards and six camera ribbon cables.

“The keypad camera were the ones that were installed on the keypad that recorded the PIN that was used to withdraw money through cloned ATM cards,” added DSP Pawan.

Also read: MBA dropout is the brain behind ATM card cloning in Punjab, five more held

Foreign national Sorin still at large

Attila told the investigators that he works for Paul Sorin, who managed to provide skimmer devices to the team members, and he knows how to download the data from skimmers and how to upload the same on ATM cards. Sorin is yet to be arrested.

On August 10, two Romanian nationals — Miclea Lecian Lonut and Paraschiv George Aletandru — were arrested from Delhi by the Chandigarh crime branch.

The two had used wigs, artificial beards and baseball caps to conceal their identity. After reports surfaced of ATM machines being rigged with skimming devices and spy cams to record pin numbers in Chandigarh, police were alerted to a Romanian gang behind the racket by the Kolkata and Delhi police.

Also read: ATM card cloning: With arrest of Romanian nationals language barrier hits Chandigarh police probe