Satara police bust card-swapping gang, arrest four from Thane

Pune: The Satara police arrested four Thane residents in connection with six cases of debit card-swapping registered in various districts, including Pune.
Police said the gang would swap debit cards of unsuspecting people at automated teller machine (ATM) kiosks and use those cards to withdraw cash.
The four men used this trick to withdraw a total of Rs90,000 in Bhosari and at Shirwal in Satara district.The men then went to Goa for a couple of days and were arrested on their way back on Monday.
Inspector U R Hajare of the Shirwal police told TOI that they tracked down the suspects using the registration number of their car and some CCTV footage from cameras on the route.
With the arrest of Pradip Patil (23), Vicky Wankhede (21), Kiran Kokane (35) and Mahesh Dhangar (31), the police claimed to have solved three cases registered in Satara district and one each in Pune (Bhosari), Ahmednagar and Solapur districts.
The police recovered 62 debit cards from the suspects. One of those cards belonged to Popat Gaikwad (66) of Bhosari, who had gone to withdraw cash from a public-sector bank’s ATM on March 2. “Four men were already inside the kiosk when I went there, but I entered anyway. I tried and failed to withdraw Rs5,000 twice, when one of the four men ‘helped’ me,” Gaikwad recalled. By the time Gaikwad realised what had happened, the suspects withdrew money from his account.
In Shirwal, the suspects swapped Nilesh Surve’s debit card. “Surve was unable to withdraw cash and was checking the receipt when two suspects — who were inside the kiosk — diverted his attention and swapped the card from the machine,” sub-inspector S V Argade of the Shirwal police said.
Later in the afternoon, Surve received five SMS alerts from his bank and found that Rs 50,000 were withdrawn from the account and approached the police. “We tracked the car using CCTV cameras on the route to Goa and nabbed the men on their way back,” Argade said.