5 arrested in swipe card scam in city

HYDERABAD: Cyberabad police arrested a gang of five men allegedly involved in skimming and cloning credit cards on Monday.They seized electronic equipments and two expensive cars from them.Police said, during May 2011, many customers at Inorbit Mall were puzzled at spooky withdrawal of huge amounts from their bank accounts.Soon, they found, their money was being siphoned off after they had subscribed to a Make-a-deal scheme through their debit/ credit cards following a free SIM card recharge of Rs 250 was offered.Madhapur police registered cases which involved the unusual transfer of huge sums of money.Within weeks, similar cases of illegal money transfer were reported at City Center, Banjara Hills.A special team was formed to investigate which finally led the police to trap them.The accused are, Polavaram Kamal Kumar, a web designer and resident of Madhapur, Ammar Ali alias Guddu, a Google advertiser from Mumbai, Castel from Tamilnadu, Zameer Shaikh, a web designer from Mumbai, Ajay Lal Mathur, a hotel waiter from Delhi and Sha Jamal from Bihar.What is Skimming?Skimming is an electronic method of stealing personal identification numbers.The skimmer scans a credit card and stores the information contained in magnetic strip.It also takes place on a legitimate business transaction.It's easier at restaurants because there the card is usually taken away by waiters.It takes micro seconds to scan the magnetic code on your cards with hand held electronic devices.The electronically captured information is then used by the thief to make illegal transactions.