Beware of clone machine before swiping your card

NEW DELHI: The next time you are swiping your debit or credit card on a point of sale (POS) machine, make sure there are no attachments with it. Crooks seem to have rigged these handheld machines. An Air Force officer and a manager with an MNC swiped their cards and lost Rs 40,000 each, the maximum permissible daily transaction limit from their account.

The possibility of these incidents being the handiwork of the same group of skimmers has not been ruled out.

The IAF officer, Praveen Kumar, said that his wife had swiped the card at Sarojini Nagar market on Thursday evening. After some time, he received a message on his mobile phone showing that Rs 10,000 had been withdrawn from his account from an ATM in CR Park. Before Kumar could block the card, three more transactions took place from another ATM in the same area. He then lodged a complaint at CR Park police station.


The second case was reported at Vasant Vihar. The MNC executive was defrauded via four transactions from his account. He had swiped his debit card at the kiosk of a cab operator at IGI airport early on Monday. “I punched in the ATM PIN in the presence of the person at the kiosk. The card was soon cloned and money withdrawn,” the victim said.

The modus operandi has indicated the usage of skimmer devices, which are used to illegally copy card details when it is swiped at an ATM or a POS machine. Such devices are available for as little as Rs 7,000, police said.

A police officer, who had earlier busted a gang using such devices to cheat people, said that criminals are getting their hands on China-made devices. “These are either procured online or through dealers selling electronic items,” he added. Many popular e-commerce websites were found offering the devices that can be connected with a USB port to read and copy card data.