Christian Charity behind Credit Card Racket in Bangalore

The cyber crime branch of Karnataka Police arrested five people, including a woman kingpin, for defrauding foreign nationals of funds equivalent to around Rs.16 crore (Rs.160 million) through credit cards and e-commerce gateways, a top police official said Friday.

The arrested defrauded foreign nationals nationals “by using their credit cards and bank accounts to transfer funds into their charitable trust account through the e-commerce gateway,” Director General of Police Shankar Bidari told reporters here. Bidari heads the criminal investigation department of the state police.

“The accused have been arrested under section 56 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and section 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” he added.

Kingpin Regina Seelam and her four associates — Victor D’Souza, Christy Solomon, Thomas Joseph and Selan Babu — had set up the Salve Regina Charitable Trust in the city in 2005 to look after senior citizens and orphaned children.

After registering the trust under the Societies Act, the accused obtained approval from the union home ministry for receiving contributions from foreign countries and Income Tax exemption from the union finance ministry in 2009.

“The accused opened a website (www.src-trust.org) for contributions from the world over to serve old people and orphans. They also opened an account with Standard Chartered Bank in Chennai for an e-commerce gateway to transfer funds equivalent to Rs.1.5 million online from debit and credit cards of foreign nationals,” Bidari said, citing the First Information Report (FIR).