Cyberabad cops nab gang cloning fingerprints to steal cash

The kingpin in the gang of seven, Nallagalla Venkateshwarlu, allegedly downloaded land registration documents from the portal of the Andhra Pradesh Inspector-General of Revenue and Stamps, collected names, Aadhar numbers and fingerprints and using these fingerprints, prepared polymer clones of these prints using a chemical.

His gang then registered themselves with digital banking applications that use Aadhar enabled payment systems (AePS), also known as mini-ATMs. They used an app called Easy Pay to find bank accounts linked to Aadhar numbers and then used another app, E-Point India, to fraudulently withdraw cash from those accounts. When caught, they had 10,000 cloned fingerprints with them, police said.

The scam came to light when the firm running the E-Point app found that a business agent they appointed was misusing the app and using the cloned fingerprint mode, stole about Rs.15 lakh from 149 customers of the firm.

Those arrested were Venkateshwarlu, Meghavath Shanker Naik, Ratham Srinivas, Darshanam Samelu, Challa Manikanta, Sheik Khasim Vali and Vishwanathula Anil Kumar.