Police arrested a Pakistani man on Saturday for allegedly defrauding bank customers by creating fake ATM cards after “skimming” their cards and using CCTV to capture pin numbers.
Mhomad Adip, 45, was arrested at his room in the Nasa Vegas Hotel after police received information from Krung Thai Bank security officials that the man had set up a mini CCTV camera and installed a card skimmer in a Krung Thai ATM box near the Honda Service center on Paholyothin soi 67 in Bang Khen, the Daily News reported.
During the arrest, police seized a skimmer, mini CCTV set, credit cards, 32 counterfeit ATM cards from various banks, four USB drives, two notebook computers, five mobile phones, a Honda City car and four sheets of paper with what police believe were ATM passwords written on them.
In what has become a somewhat regular method of ATM fraud in Bangkok, unsuspecting customers insert their cards in an ATM machine that has been rigged by a thief to skim data from the magnetic strip on the cards. The data is then transferred to a USB drive and “printed” onto counterfeit cards which can then be used to withdraw money on the accounts using passwords captured by CCTV cameras.
The suspect in this case, Adip, said that he was part of a gang and received 20 percent commission on any fraudulent transactions from a machine he had rigged. Based on information he gave during interrogation, police are now searching for another Pakistani man believed to be in Thailand and two Romanian men, police said.
Adip has been charged with modifying an ATM for electronic card fraud.
Police suggest that ATM customers cover the keypad every time they enter a password, and if anyone suspects they may have been a victim of this particular crime, they can contact the Bang Khen Police Station.
