Wednesday, December 21, 2011

ATM fraud racket busted

KATHMANDU: Metropolitan Police Crime Division today arrested two brothers long involved in duplicating ATM cards and withdrawing hefty amounts from accounts.

The arrestees are identified Sabin Rimal (26) and Ritesh Rimal (22) of Kalikasthan, Kathmandu- 32. 

According to MPCD, the duo had managed to withdraw more than Rs 4.82 million by duplicating ATM cards issued by Nabil Bank in the Capital. 

“Preliminary investigation shows that Rimal brothers withdrew Rs 4,825,350 from the accounts of 12 depositors of Nabil Bank,” DSP AM Chandra Dhami informed. 

For this, they would go to a few ATM counters of the Himalayan Bank that were not fitted with surveillance camera to ‘keep their identity secret’.

It has been revealed that Sabin is a former employee at the ATM section of the central office of Nabil Bank in Durbar Marg where he worked for 17 months. 

“I stole pin numbers of ATM cards issued to depositors when I quit the job in the bank and operated the racket,” Sabin conceded. 

Police have seized 12 data encoding machines, an ID card printer, 24 laptop computers, a scanner, 16 discs, 73 blank ATM cards, 273 visa electronic cards of Nabil Bank, and a huge cache of Nabil master debit cards, Nabil local credit cards, Laxmi bank credit cards, Nabil Nari Bachat debit cards and Rs 334,500. 

The equipment were procured from Bangkok, the racketeers said. 

During interrogation, Rimal brothers said they were working in tandem with international hackers.
Source HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE