In what has raised a serious concern over the safety of personal data, a cybercriminal gang -- allegedly found using fake thumbprints to siphon off money -- was busted by the Uttar Pradesh police, reported News18.
The case was cracked in Bhadohi district by the UP police, in coordination with the cyber cell department.
Additional superintendent of police Rajesh Bharti said two cases were registered, one by Mishrilal Kumar, a resident of Hridaypatti village of Bhadohi district, and another by Bindu Singh, a resident of Keertipur village of Bhadohi.
Following this, two men -- Rishi Raj Singh and Rohit Kumar -- allegedly found to be part of an inter-state gang of cybercriminals were taken into custody on May 2.
The fraudsters were allegedly withdrawing money by forging biometric thumb impressions and abusing the Aadhaar-enabled payment system. "They copy thumb impressions on butter paper from various websites to create duplicate silicon thumbs," the publication quoted Bharti as saying.
According to the police, the duo learned thumb cloning from YouTube videos, highlighting that many channels offer tutorials on cloning fingerprints that should be banned by the government.
The police seized 194 ‘thumb clones’ from their possession, along with machines and equipment used to create fingerprint clones, including a poly stamper machine, a printer machine, two biometric machines with OTG (on-the-go) adapter, five MOPS (multi-option payment system), five ATM cards, three mobiles, a polymer, and an image darkener, as per the report.