UP police bust Rs 35 million credit card racket

Uttar Pradesh police's Special Task Force on Sunday busted a credit card racket, where a group had siphoned off millions using cloned credit cards.

The police found out that transactions to the tune of Rs 35 million were carried out through these cloned credit cards over a period of just 18 days in Lucknow alone. 

Some of cloned and misused cards were traced to foreign nationals who had not visited India during the period when the transactions were made.

The police arrested thee persons from the office of a local travel agency that played a key role at the Lucknow end of the racket and has its base in New Delhi. 

Later, the alleged kingpin of the racket Yogesh Mahajanal fell into the STF net as he was present at the travel agency when STF sleuths raided the office.

Based on preliminary investigation, here's the modus operandi of the gang:

The gang will book international air tickets in the name of foreign nationals, using the photocopies of their passports.

It will them cancel those bookings – the tickets costing anywhere between Rs 70,000 and Rs 150,000 – and siphon the money to the travel agency's accounts.

Disclosing this here Sunday evening, STF Inspector-General Jagmohan Yadav said, "We got on to trail of this bungling after receiving a series of complaints about misuse of credit cards from HDFC Bank. We kept track of all major transactions and it did not take us long to track down this agency, Lucky Travels."

The travel agency owner Kulwant Singh was also arrested along with Sachin Chopra a local goon.

Twenty-four credit cards belonging to different banks, along with four newly cloned fake credit cards, bearing just the magnetic strip were recovered.

Besides, 34 photocopies of passports of foreign nationals, card-reading machines and charge slips of HDFC, ICICI, Bank of Baroda and UTI banks were also seized.