Kolkata bank fraud: Arrested Romanian nationals sent to 14-day police custody
Kolkata, Aug 4 (IBNS): Two Romanian nationals, who were arrested from Delhi in connection with a bank fraud in Kolkata on Friday, were produced in a city court on Saturday and they were remanded to police custody for 14 days, reports said.
Earlier on Friday late evening, Kolkata Police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) nabbed two Romanian nationals, who have been identified as Dumitru Calin and Oprea Ovidiu Simion, from south-west Delhi's Munrika area when they were trying to withdraw money fraudulently from a Bank of India (BOI)'s ATM.
Police seized several cloned ATM-cum-debit cards, magnetic strips of ATM cards, cloning-and-skimming devices, Romanian passports, masks, mobile phones and sim cards from their possessions.
The duo was brought to Kolkata on Saturday morning on a transit remand and produced in city's Bankshall Court
The court sent them to 14-day police custody till Aug 17 for further interrogation.
"We are quizzing the duo to get information about their entire gang and their operation's process," a senior official of Kolkata Police told IBNS.
Since Monday, at least 78 complaints of fraudulently withdrawal were registered with several police stations in Kolkata as well city police's Anti Bank Fraud section.
After beginning probe into the case, Kolkata Police had formed a SIT to probe the matter and deputed a team of senior investigators to Delhi to bust the fraudsters' gang.
City police said that around 18-20 lakh rupees of at least 78 Kolkata bank customers were fraudulently debited from few Delhi ATMs.
Police identified three ATM kiosks- Punjab National Bank (PNB) ATM at Mullick Bazar, Canara Bank ATM at Golpark and Kotak-Mahindra Bank's ATM at south Kolkata's Elgin Road- where fraudsters installed skimming device and micro-cameras to capture customers' ATM cards' details and to know confidential PIN respectively.
"They used 'cloned' ATM cards to debit money from bank customers' accounts," a city police official said.
Meanwhile, PNB officials claimed that money refund process to the savings accounts of victim customers have been started.
"As many as 31 persons, including 19 customers and 12 employee-senior officers, of our bank registered complaints of fraudulently withdrawal at PNB's Mullick Bazar branch and we have started refunding their money," a PNB official told IBNS.
Canara Bank's officers said that their money refunding process was in progress and it will be completed in next few days.
(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
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