City police officers investigating the ATM fraud case have come across information about the alleged involvement of certain restaurants in cloning the debit and credit cards of customers following the interrogation of two members of the “Bihar gang” arrested on Thursday.
Sources at Lalbazar said that a restaurant belonging to a famous food chain at Park Circus is already under the scanner. The names of two more restaurants have also surfaced. A senior officer said that preliminary investigation and interrogation of Mudassar Khan and Irfanuddin, held yesterday in connection with fraudulent withdrawal of money using cloned cards revealed that they had bought debit card data from employees of at least one restaurant located near Park Circus.
According to the officer, the employees of the restaurants used skimmer devices to read data from debit cards belonging to customers who used them to pay their bills. “The cloned data along with the PIN was bought by them for a hefty sum. They would then prepare the cloned cards and use them to withdraw money from the customers’ accounts,” a police officer said.