The scheme of the skimmer caught off guard.

A nondescript house in Picnic Garden, a lower-middle class neighbourhood in South Kolkata, was the hub of a high-tech counterfeit credit card manufacturing racket that had its tentacles in several countries. For the first time in India, Kolkata Police managed to bust this high-tech credit card skimming racket that has already left many people broke and banks bleeding.

 On March 8, 2010, Monday, the Kolkata Police Detective Department officers were amazed by the sophistication of the operation when they raided the hideout and arrested Nigerian Benson Oladetan Adams and a woman, Leeanna Jordasn. Twenty-five-year-old Adams turned out to be a footballer who has played second-division in Bengal. And Leeanna was found to be a Kolkatan, married to the alleged kingpin of the racket, Nigerian Benson Oladetan Adams, who was arrested from Kolkata airport on Sunday, the 7th March night. Adams has been in Kolkata for past five years.

 The detectives investigating the case said, the Nigerians ran such a high-tech ‘skimming’ operation that they had swindled over Rs 1 crore in just four months. The racket has been operating in India for at least five years, during which several crimes were detected in cities like Jaipur, Bangalore and Kolkata but they could never be tracked down.

 According to the investigators, skimming is a highly specialized operation where the data on a card’s magnetic strip is electronically stolen and used to clone the card which is then used in another part of the world. In 2007, Kolkata Police had nabbed a Bangladeshi national with counterfeit cards but the kingpins remained elusive.

 Kolkata Police’s Detective Department started a special operation three months ago when a private bank in Kolkata noticed a major forgery. “Within a week, they received 12 cases where credit cards of some foreign banks – which mainly operate in US and Europe – were swiped in India. The card holders were overseas and could prove that they had never used the cards in India. The Indian bank, whose Electronic Data Capturing (EDC) machine was used to swipe the fake cards, had to pay the amount. The bank realized it was a case of skimming and lodged a complaint with us”.

 Starting virtually blind, the Anti-Bank fraud section started from ground zero – the payment counters.  According to recent rules, and identity document is needed during a high value purchase. In all the cases, they had used fake driving licenses,” Police used the fake documents to work their way in and arrested two persons who had used fake cards to purchase some jewellery from a Central Avenue shop.

 The duo led police to Ankit Shaw and Manish Agarwal – two Kolkata-based youths. “Both Ankit and Manish’s fathers are traders who have shops in central Kolkata,” said detective department chief Damayanti Sen.

Police realized that both youths were working as mere agents. To pin down the masterminds, they decided to watch Ankit and Manish rather than arrest them right away. The investigators found that the trail led to Benson Adams. “He arrived in Kolkata five years ago with a student visa and enrolled in Sikkim Manipal University. He even played for some second and third division clubs in Kolkata,” said Sen.

 Police discovered that Adams was the racket’s top leader in Kolkata who used to make counterfeit cards with sophisticated electronic gadgets. “Adams engaged Ankit and Manish to use the counterfeit cards,”.

 Till then, police had no clue how Adams was collecting the data of overseas card users. From Leeanna, police identified her Nigerian husband Peter Orendubi as another mastermind who used to collect the data from western countries.

 On Sunday ( March 7 ) evening, Peter was rounded up from the airport by investigating officers, when he arrived from Nigeria. Soon after his arrest, police moved on the entire gang, picking up Leeanna, Adam, Ankit and Manish and unearthing the Picnic Garden production unit. On Monday, all of them were produced in a city court and remanded in police custody for 14 days.

 In the past four months, Adam and his aides have swindled nearly a crore by using duplicate cards, say police. The bank that complained has lost around Rs 25 lakh.

 How Skimming happens

 Skimming is a hi-tech credit card forgery where the fraudsters steal the details embedded in the black magnetic strip of a card, including the unique CVV number, by using an electronic gadget. You may be standing at a hotel counter, watching your card being swiped, when someone nearby switches on the skimmer to steal your data. They then transfer the data and re-emboss it on another blank magnetic strip by using a data reader and writer. Finally, they paste the strip on another plastic card, emboss the logo and colour scheme of an actual card and set off shopping.

 Skimming leaves you and the bank bleeding

 Both the card holder and the financial institution whose Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machine was used to swipe a counterfeit card are the victims in a case of skimming When a fraudster buys something with a counterfeit card, the bill goes to the original card holder When a card is swiped on a bank’s EDC machine, it is this bank that will immediately pay the money to the shop/hotel etc. It can then claim the amount from the card-issuer But if the card holder can prove he did not make the transaction, the card issuer charges the bank whose EDC machine was used to swipe the counterfeit. An Indian private bank lost Rs 25 lakh in this way to skimming.

 How racket worked

 Nigerian Peter Orendubi used to collect stolen data from runners through e-mail and SMS He passed it down the chain to wife Leeanna and footballer Benson Oladetan Adams and others in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangladesh Adams and people like him embossed the data on a blank card Several skimming cases have been detected in Jaipur, Chennai & Delhi. A few runners and local agents were nabbed, but big fish like Peter and Adams were always a step ahead.