[Mearticbaibre]

CHENNAI: More than two weeks ago, a five-member gang was arrested for cheating 64 persons in the city of over Rs 30 lakh. The gang placed skimmers in card slots of ATMs, copied the details of cards and cloned them before using them to withdraw money.

The situation, police say, is scary because skimmers are easily available online through blogs. Most of the fraudsters, police add, are based out of Europe, France and Britain. "There is a huge network," says A Radhika, deputy commissioner of police, Central Crime Branch (CCB). A gang steals data here and sends it to European countries . "Some Sri Lankan Tamils there clone the cards and use them," said a senior police officer.

The sites that sell skimmers offer four varieties, including customized skimmers. "Please note we have some skimming kits on hand ready to be shipped but some devices will have to be customized for the region of country in which you will be operating. The skimmer and pin pad can be spray painted in your chosen colour, characters of the chosen alphabet which would be typed on the buttons of pin pad ( best would be to provide us a picture of which ATM you have the intention of placing the device on)," reads a paragraph in the blog.

The kit even comes with instructions. The skimmer needs just two minutes to transfer the data on to a personal computer. "We live in a wired world and where anyone can get connected internationally , for good or for criminal purposes. Chennaibased gangs with international connections purchase skimmers online," says K Jaishankar, formerly member of the UN core group on Identity Related Crime.

The skimmer is supplied with the necessary software, including credit card writer. A click on the 'upload' button and the details of credit card usage are stored in the computer. The machine can store details of nearly 3,000 cards. All a fraudster has to do is to swipe a blank card in the writer and the data instantly gets transferred to it. These counterfeit cards are complete with security holograms markings, he said. "It is an identity theft and the person's name is used to siphon out money from his account ," Jaishankar said.

A senior Interpol officer said that more than $ 1 billion had been withdrawn over the last 10 years across the world using cloned cards. In Far East countries like Malaysia 5,000 cards are cloned every night.

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