Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar
The Bagepalli police on tuesday arrested two former car sales executives who used to cheat people visiting ATMs through card swapping Fraud.
Senior officer said,The accused would move around the ATMs targeting gullible people and offer to help them to withdraw cash.
While one of the accused was busy in transaction his associates deliberately get into the ATM and the duo start arguing.In the melee the accused would replace the card and hand it over to the confused victim and escape.
Using this technique,the duo had cheated Naseema Sultana,a school teacher and emptied her salaried account after replacing her card on June 16.
Based on the complaint,the Bagepalli town police Inspector,Prashanth R Varni and his team analysed over 100 CCTV footage for a month before zeroing in on Thimmarayappa,40 and his associate Manjunath T,38 from Malur town in Kolar district.
The police have also recovered cash Rs.1 lakh and 38 ATM cards from the accused .
With their arrest the police have cracked such cases reported in and around Chikkaballapur district.The accused have even committed similar offences in different parts of Andhra Pradesh and the police based on the confession of the accused have communicated the information with the AP counterparts .
The accused are addicted to online gambling and blow money on the vices,a senior officer said.The police are trying to track down the victims based on the seized ATM cards .
The police have advised the people to be careful and not to entertain strangers while visiting the ATMs.
Superintendent of Police,Kushal Chowksey,appreciated the police team for cracking the card swapping fraud .
