Chennai city police on Friday arrested three more Sri Lankan nationals, including one against whom Interpol had issued a red corner notice, in connection with the card skimming scam that swindled 15 lakh from customers of a petrol outlet in Guindy.
Police identified the arrested as Jayatharan Thambapillai, 28, a native of Trincomallee in Sri Lanka, and his accomplices V Navaneetha Raja, 37, and V Prateep Kumar, 28, also from Sri Lanka.
Investigators had on March 14 arrested Prem alias Sivanesan Parthiban, a Sri Lankan Tamil, and six employees of the petrol outlet. Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths learnt while interrogating Prem that others were involved in the racket, an investigating officer said.
The gang used a skimmer attached to the card reader at the fuel station to steal card data, clone credit cards and make withdrawals from customers’ accounts.
Police teams led by CCB deputy commissioner of police S Jayakumar and assistant commissioner of police, bank fraud wing, C Jaya Singh, arrested the three suspects from a house in Ramapuram, 3km from Chennai. They recovered three laptops, two encoding machines, 15 fake credit cards and cellphones from the house.
Jayatharan told investigators that he arrived in Tamil Nadu last August on an illegal ferry. He contacted Raja and Kumar and stayed with them in the Ramapuram house from where they operated the racket.
Raja, who came to Chennai as a refugee a few years ago and was earlier lodged in the Dindigul refugee camp, helped several Sri Lankan Tamil refugees by finding them houses on rent in the suburbs.
“Jayatharan, a civil engineer, is a computer expert,” the investigating officer said. “He collected stolen credit card data from hackers and exchanged information with them.”
Jayatharan was involved in several credit card scams in Sri Lanka from 2011. He was arrested but vanished after being released on bail. He successfully evaded arrest and, on the request of the Sri Lankan police, Interpol issued a red corner notice against him in 2013.
By then, Jayatharan had come to Chennai. A magistrate’s court remanded the arrested men in judicial custody. Police had earlier arrested Prem and his accomplices. - TOI
