Credit card forgery racket busted

KOLKATA: City police busted an inter-state credit card forgery racket on Wednesday and nabbed two people who supplied card details to racketeers. However, the kingpin managed to evade the police net.

The forgery came to light when two customers of a private bank lodged a complaint with bank officials that fraudulent transactions worth Rs 1.18 lakh had been made on their cards. One of the complainant is the branch manager of the same bank. The bank lodged a complaint with Alipore police station on Wednesday afternoon with transaction details.

During the probe, police found that the transactions were made after August 29 on the internet. Though the illegal transactions were made from different places - complainant Sanjay Malhotra's card was used in Pune, while Sandeep Chakraborti's was used in New Delhi - the statements showed certain similarities.

Both cards were used to purchase materials from the same company (a telecom major ). Also, the complainants had used their cards last at an Alipore shopping mall.

Investigating officers Prithwiraj Bhattacharya and V Mukherjee of Alipore police found that during the last legal transactions on both cards, Mritunjay Mishra was the mall staff, who had swiped both cards.

Police picked up Mishra, a business management student . During interrogation he broke down and admitted that he used to copy the details of the credit cards. "For the last two months he had copied detail like name, card number and validity of many cards," said an officer.

Police said Mishra supplied the details to Amit Mishra, a cellphone mechanic at Fancy Market in Kidderpore. Amit was nabbed later in the day. Sleuths said later that both Amit and Mritunjay were minor players in the racket.

Amit told police that a few months back he met a youth named Amren, who claimed to be a resident of Delhi. He offered to pay Amit Rs 500 for the details of each card. "Amren would verify the authenticity of each card before paying Amit," said an officer. Police are looking for Amren. They also seized the details of six more cards from Amit.

In another fraud case, a retired government employee, Nalini Mohanti, was arrested for duping may people to the tune of Rs 30 lakh. Officers at Gariahat police station received two complaints against Mohanti and his kin. Mohanti, his daughter Sutapa and son-in-law Sandeep allegedly lured people to invest money in stocks with the assurance of double returns.

When the investors didn't get returns, they lodged complaints . Mohanti's daughter an son-in-law are absconding.

News Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kolkata_/Credit_card_forgery_racket_busted_/articleshow/3446476.cms