Crook steals contactless cards, spends nearly Rs 42,000 in Pune

PUNE: A pickpocket stole a 43-year-old bank employee’s contactless debit and credit cards on Tuesday and went on a shopping spree.
The crook was savvy enough to know that contactless card transactions under Rs 2,000 don’t require a personal identification number (PIN), and spent Rs 41,551 at various places before the man got the cards blocked.
According to the complaint, the bank employee was travelling in a Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) bus, when the pickpocket pinched his wallet containing all the cards.Within five hours, the complaint stated, the suspect used the cards at different food outlets and clothing stores.
The complainant, a resident of Shevalewadi, has lodged a first information report (FIR) with the Bund Garden police.
Rupesh Pisal of the Bund Garden police, who is investigating the complaint, said the incident occurred when the complainant was commuting between Pune railway station and Pimpri at 8am.
At 8.23am, the complainant received an SMS alert that Rs2,000 was spent on his debit card at a food joint. Some time later, the card was used at a dairy outlet near the station. When he started getting a stream of messages, the complainant realized his cards were stolen. “By the time he got around to blocking the cards, the suspect had already spent Rs41,551,” Pisal said.
Around Rs14,000 was spent using the complainant’s debit card, while the rest was spent using his credit card. “We have yet to get details of the credit card transactions,” Pisal said.
‘Contactless payment’ is a new technology that allows a card holder to simply tap the card on the point of sale machine to pay. Contactless cards sport a little ‘Wi-Fi’ symbol on them. They are embedded with chips that make use of the ‘Near Field Communication’ technology. One PoS machine can only read one card at a time, and the card needs to be within 4cm of the machine.