In a respite to many banks in Chennai, the Chennai city police have cracked a major credit card racket. The police have arrested a gang of seven members, who have reportedly duped the banks to the tune of Rs. 65 lakhs.

Chennai City Police Commissioner G Nanchil Kumaran said the gang, which includes an industrialist, were caught with gold jewellery worth 35 sovereigns, a car, 15 computers and Rs 47,000 in cash. In addition to this, about 70 credit cards, issued by various MNC banks, were seized from them.

On interrogation, it was learnt that the methodology used by the gang was simple and effective- prepare bogus documents, apply for credit cards in various banks, involve some marketing executives of the bank (who clear the application forms), swipe them as they like and also withdraw cash through ATMs.

The lucky break for the police came from a very unlikely case. While investigating a complaint lodged by a businessman that his credit card was misused by somebody else and cash worth Rs 3.5 lakh had been withdrawn, the police stumbled upon this bigger fraud.

Further inquiries revealed that Xavier Mathew (35), who claimed to be an industrialist, had a huge set-up that was involved in creating false documents for getting credit cards.

The payments on these cards were defaulted as the banks had no way of tracking down the culprits since all the papers provided by them were fake. Apart from Mathew, police arrested Raja Mohammed (22), Karthik (24), Rajesh Khanna (22), Sasi Kumar and Ravi (32).

Police sources said that some top level bank employees and marketing executives were also part of this racket. Now, the challenge is to track them down, sources added.