14 DAY TRIAL // What at first seemed to be just another Indian credit card cloning case, later revealed itself to be a massive operation that made victims at tens of financial institutions from about ten countries, including Thailand, Mexico, Chile, Switzerland and the US.
According to The Times of India, on October 5 a Sri Lanka citizen was arrested for credit card forgery, but as the investigation went on, the authorities found data that allowed him to fake 1,800 cards.
It looks as the data wasn't obtained directly by the suspect but instead it was purchased online, fact which might explain the large number of geographic territories involved.
"We found this voluminous data on Umesh's laptop. On interrogation, he told us that he had paid US $20,000 (14,000 EUR) to buy the data online," revealed a police officer.
"Before he could write the data into many empty cards, we arrested him. As per the advice of police commissioner J K Tripathy, we have segregated the data bank-wise and country-wise. We have been sending them to the foreign banks concerned through the police commissioner," he added.
Now authorities will have a hard time informing all the banks involved, the institutions then being faced with the task of making sure none of their customers are affected. Unfortunately, as the data was offered online, anyone else with an evil plan in mind may have purchased the same amount of data.
"We have requested the banks concerned to block the cards of these customers. Though, we have nabbed Umesh, many other scamsters may have collected the same data through the website and drained the cash from several accounts," the same officer said.
The lesson that we should learn from this unfortunate situation is that we should be more cautions when handing out personal information online. You never know what criminal mastermind might hide behind an apparently harmless form.