Mumbai police apprehended 8, credit card fraud unearthed

Mumbai police nabbed eight people of credit card fraud racket. The police arrested the accused on a tip-off from an HSBC Bank official. The arrested have been identified as Sameer Dave (26), Sudhir Naikare (27), Mahesh Sharma (39), Gangesh Pathak (21), Anand Mishra (26) and Harsh Badgujar (24). Following their interrogation, the police on Monday arrested two others — identified as Bhayandar residents Harshal Kapadia and Harshid Parekh. The accused have been remanded to police custody till May 5

The Oshiwara police told Nayan Chandrakant Bhagdev (34), a manager with the HSBC Bank at Malad informed them that he had come across a variety of dubious credit card transactions in shopping centers at malls in the Oshiwara Lokhandwala area. The manager also told the police that he had got information that a gang of fraudsters is possessing fake credit cards and would be visiting the Kamdhenu Shopping Centre at Lokhandwala on April 26.

Inspector Datta Sankhe of the Oshiwara police station said, “Acting on the information, a team of police officers laid a trap near the place. At the place, our officers saw an Indica car with six men inside approaching. Out of the six, two men got down and were given two credit cards by the others in the car. They were signaled to enter the shopping centre. Finding their movements suspicious, the officers who had laid the trap arrested them.”

The police took in custody from the accused a laptop with pen drive, other computer accessories, 14 fake credit cards, 2 fake driving licenses, fake RTO stamps, fake PAN cards and a Chinese-make scanner used for transferring credit card data, Sankhe said.

“On their interrogation, we found that these men were running a major credit card fraud. One of them, Delhi-based Anand Mishra, is a computer engineer. They had a Chinese-make electronic device which could be used for transferring data from a credit card to it. Their modus operandi was to steal credit cards, use the machine to transfer the data from the stolen cards and then re-transfer the entire data to a non-operational credit card in their possession. After transferring the data, the cards can be used for making purchases at various shopping centers. Till date, they have allegedly done shopping of goods worth more than a lakh. The police also seized fake licenses and PAN cards from the accused. We still do not know the full extent of the racket they were running. Further investigation is on,” added Sankhe.