Kolawole Michelle, Nigerian national arrested in India with 185 credit cards

A Nigerian national and a Mumbai-based Indian trader have been arrested in the Indian city of Mumbai for allegedly running an international racket of cloning credit cards and using it for shopping on the internet, the city’s Crime Branch officials said yesterday. Kolawole Michelle from Nigeria and Surjeet Singh from Mumbai were arrested on Saturday with 185 blank credit cards, credit card printer and reader, laptop computer and other equipment used for cloning credit cards, they said.

During interrogation, the accused persons said they had got the cloned credit cards from a gang run by a Nigerian based in Mumbai, which were sent through a local angadia (a form of courier service), police said. Following a tip-off that two persons, including a Nigerian, were hiding near Sarangpur area, police raided the place and arrested the duo. They have been booked under section 465, 467, 468 (forgery) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 66 and 65 of the Information Technology Act.

Last week, Mumbai’s city crime branch arrested four persons with 53 cloned credit cards of various banks.