Call centre staff, cabbie arrested for card skimming

A call centre employee and a cab driver were arrested and sent to jail for using an Australian citizen’s credit card to pay Rs 7.3 lakh for their three-day stay at a luxury hotel in Halasuru.

The arrested are Syed Nadir Nafees (25) and Syed Mohiuddin Quadri (22). Both are residents of Pillanna Garden in Kadugondanahalli.

In his police complaint, Imran Hiroli, owner of Hotel Conrad on Kensington Road in Halasuru, said Nafees and Quadri checked into the hotel on December 4 and stayed till December 7.

In those three days, they stayed in separate suites, binged on expensive liquor, cigarettes and different cuisines.

When they finally checked out on December 7, they had piled up bills amounting to Rs 7,33,461.

Suspicious claims

The police said they presented a credit card in the name of Wallis Parker, an Australian citizen who they claimed was their friend. They gave the credit card number and the PIN to the hotel staff to make the transaction.

The staff, however, grew suspicious and asked the two how they could use the card of a third party, and a foreigner at that.

Nafees and Quadri told the staff that they could arrange for an authentication letter from Parker, and then made a few phone calls.

Then, an authentication letter came from Parker for the perusal of the hotel staff. Despite their suspicions, they made the transaction and
cleared the bill.

The following day, the hotel owner revealed his suspicions to the Halasuru police, while filing a complaint, that the two may have skimmed the information from the original card owner and used it to create a duplicate (clone) in the same person’s name.

The Halasuru police, who traced the two men to KG Halli and arrested them, found that Parker’s authorisation letter was forged.

“We suspect the two were involved in card skimming. It is unlikely that the card was stolen as the owner would have blocked it once he realised it was stolen,” a senior police officer said.