Lafia — Police in Nasarawa State have nabbed a syndicate which specializes in cloning Automated Teller Machines (ATM) cards to withdraw money from the bank accounts of unsuspecting persons.

The syndicate is made up of four men, all undergraduates. They were arrested on November 10, in Lafia, the state capital while trying to withdraw cash from people's accounts using the cloned cards. The state Commissioner of Police Shehu Babalola who paraded the suspects in Lafia at the weekend, said they were arrested with a laptop, an encoder machine used for cloning the cards, N69,000 which they had withdrawn from people's accounts, and five explorer ATM cards.

The suspects who spoke to newsmen said they bought the ATM machines in bulk to clone card for the purpose of withdrawing money from any account they wished.

They said they had been using the cards for months now, withdrawing from accounts belonging to people who were careless with their pin numbers at ATM points.

"This is brain work. We position ourselves at ATM machines, whenever we see customers on queue. We then pretend to be waiting, while focusing on the pin numbers of careless customers. We can cram any number so long as the customer enters the pin while we are there. Instead of taking to robbery, carrying arms, we decided to use our intelligence. If you are not sound upstairs, you can't do this. I know that many people are into this. It is rampant in our country", he said.

He said his gang got the idea of cloning the cards from a website, through which they ordered for the cloning machine at the cost of $1,500 from Malaysia.

The police commissioner who was accompanied by the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), ASP Richard Akoji, gave the names of the suspects as Ucheji Donald Chika, 24, a student of Enugu State University and Technology (ESUST), Uyamune KEnechukwu, 23, a graduate of Religion and Human Relations, and Ogbazi Kenechukwu, 22, also a student of ESUST. The fourth suspect is Akabogu Chukwu Emeka, 22, a student of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.