Alert techie helps bank, police nab 2 cyber criminals in Tambaram

What began as a usual visit to the Axis Bank ATM kiosk on Gandhi Road at West Tambaram for the software engineer on Thursday noon led to a nearly 12-hour long vigil for the police, which ended when they caught the suspects who installed the skimmer on the machine to steal data including card number and password from those used the kiosk.

With the incident from Gowrivakkam near Tambaram, where 20 customers lost money to skimming gang five days ago, remaining fresh in his mind, the techie inspected the machine. He because suspicious about certain features. He then called up the number given at the kiosk and spoke to Axis Bank maintenance officer Rajesh Kumar.

“The caller told the maintenance officer that a skimmer machine was fixed on the particular ATM. Rajesh Kumar, who rushed to the ATM with bank staff, checked the machine and confirmed that the suspicion was true,” police said.

The bank team then informed the police about the matter, and requested them to be on stand-by while bank officials waited for the criminals to return to pick the skimmer machine. In the meanwhile, they also browsed through the CCTV footage and found two men fixing skimmer at the machine around 10.40 am on Thursday.

Thus began the long wait that went on till 11.30 in the night, when the two scamsters returned to the kiosk. As soon as they entered, the bank staff downed the shutters trapping them inside and informed the police, who landed within a few minutes.

The duo initially maintained innocence and even tried complaining to the police about the bank staff. However, their stories fell through after the police frisked them and found the parts of skimmer machines hidden inside their innerwear.

During investigation, police found that one component was fixed on the mouth of slit where the card is swiped, while the other device was attached to number pad of the machine. “Both would capture data input and store it. The data is then used by the criminals to clone cards or to make online purchase and even to withdraw cash,” a police official said.

Police later identified the two as Sulthan, 51 and Suliaman, 49, natives of Tirunelveli, who were staying in a lodge in Kilpauk. Local police believe that the same two could be behind the SBI ATM skimming case as well. The case has been handed over to cybercrime cell of Chennai CCB.