Gang that cheated airlines of crores busted

New Delhi: An e-ticketing racket that robbed 22 airlines of crores of rupees has been busted with the arrest of five men, including a Congo national.
Police said they had printouts of more than 10,000 tickets that the gang bought using stolen credit card details. They said they had also traced 335 email identities used to buy the tickets. The gang had a sizable database of stolen credit card details, most of them from Nigeria. They were sourced by the Congolese gang member Kalendo Ngoy. Another gang member, Bhuwan Koirala, used to work as a bar manager and stole credit card details when customers handed them to him for payment.
The gang would approach prospective passengers and offer tickets to any place at up to 40 per cent discount. It would take payment from them in cash and then buy the tickets on the Internet using the credit-card details to pay the airlines. When the airlines would seek payment from the credit card companies, they would find card holders complaining that they had neither made those online bookings nor travelled.
Police investigated the case on a complaint from Spicejet and Kingfisher Airlines, which said they were cheated to a tune of Rs 28 lakh and Rs 22 lakh since January. Besides Ngoy and Koirala, the gang members are Vipin Dahal, Darshan Singh, and Jasbir Singh, who had been arrested in May this year for cheating and forgery.
04/11/07 Delhi Newsline

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Categories: General Aviation Nov 2007