Fraudulent ATM withdrawals: Two held in Bhadohi for transactions using thumb impressions of users

Police arrested two persons, alleged members of an inter-state gang involved in preparing thumb impressions of ATM users and using them to withdraw money from their bank accounts, from Bhadohi, on Tuesday.

Interestingly, the miscreants learned to create thumb impressions on YouTube.

The accused have been identified Rishi Raj Singh, Resident of Soraon area in Prayagraj and Rohit Kumar, a resident of Mau. They were arrested from the Tehsil complex area Bhadohi.

A total of 194 thumb impressions each with slip of Aadhar number and bank name and machines and equipment used for making fingerprint clone-poly stamper machine, printer machine, laptop, two biometric machines with OTG (on the go) adapter, five MOPS (multi option payment system), 5 ATM cards, three mobiles, a polymer and image darkener have been recovered from their possession.

An amount of ₹ 87,000 has been frozen in three bank accounts of the gang members. The process of freezing the remaining accounts is in the process and efforts are on to arrest two other accused.

A senior police officer said that a case was registered under section 420 (cheating) of IPC and 66D IT Act in Bhadohi police station on the basis of two complaints registered by Mishrilal, a resident of Hridaypatti, and Bindu Singh, a resident of Keertipur.

Police said that during interrogation, the accused revealed that together they used to create customer service point centers. Thereafter, in the name of providing jobs and loans, they used to obtain Aadhaar card, PAN card and photos of gullible locals. Then they used to take screenshots of thumb impressions from the Bhulekh website.

Later, the thumb impression was scanned and then they used to prepare clones using equipment used for making rubber stamps. By doing CSP login through biometric machines, they used to transfer people’s money to their acquaintances’ accounts.

The police said that the accused confessed to had learned to make fake fingerprints by watching YouTube videos.