A Kenyan is among two criminals arrested in India for skimming and stealing from Indians.
As reported by the Indian Express, the 24-year-old Kenyan and a 31-year-old from Uganda travelled to India on student visas but overstayed in the country. To make ends meet, the two began skimming.
Skimming is a kind of cybercrime that involves stealing sensitive information like credit card numbers, login details, or other personal information from ATMs using illegal devices.
Police in India used specialised engineering techniques to help arrest the two, leading them to bust an international gang. The two committed the crime in a small district in Karnataka, India, which is 2,146 kilometers from New Delhi, which is about going from Nairobi to Mombasa four times.
An undated image of a customer using an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), January 4. 2025.
Kenyans.co.ke
In the incidents that happened in December 2020, police found that the two suspects stayed in a house with five others and disguised labourers.
The accused used to buy expired debit cards and were cloning the debit cards by installing skimming machines in ATM kiosks.
They would then skim the debit cards in one state and withdraw the money in another state to make things complicated for investigators.
According to the police, their arrest led to solving more than 65 similar cases registered in the area.
How did the skimming work? “The method is that a pinhole camera is attached on top of the keypad where the PIN is keyed in and a skimming device is attached to the card swiping slot,” District Cyber Crime, Economic Offences, and Narcotics (CEN) wing police inspector M V Sheshadri explained to the Indian Express.
“This device obtains the data of the debit card. The debit cards then relied on magnetic strip swipe technology,” Sheshadri continued.
Following their arrest, Tumakuru CEN police in India filed a chargesheet before the court. On December 30, 2024, the Second Additional District and Sessions Court of Tumakuru convicted Ivan and Makamu. They were both sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.
In the ruling, the court detailed that it regarded the nature of the offense and how it was executed or committed when deciding the jail term.
The judge also evaluated the rights of the victim of the crime and the society at large while considering the imposition of appropriate punishment.
Since then, Sheshadri revealed that banks stopped using magnetic strips in ATM cards and switched to microchip technology to prevent skimming.
A file image on an Automated Teller Machine(ATM) Card, January 4, 2025.
Kenyans.co.ke