The Fourth Judicial Magistrate Court in Coimbatore has convicted a 36-year-old man who headed a gang that cloned debit cards of ATM users and withdrew over ₹30 lakh using duplicated cards.

The police said that D. Lavasanthan, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee from Thilagar Street in Chennai, was awarded three years of imprisonment for five offences and six months of imprisonment for another offence in a total of four cases. The sentences will run concurrently.

The cybercrime police in Coimbatore arrested Lavasanthan, G. Vaseem, 30, and B. Tamilarasan, 26, of Krishnagiri, S. Niranjan, 38, of Kanathur in Chennai, S. Kishog, 28, of Woraiyur in Tiruchi and R. Manokaran, 18, of Tiruppur in June 2018. The police had recovered a luxury sedan, an SUV, 20 duplicate debit cards, two laptops, 17 mobile phones, a card reader and 50g of jewellery from them.

The gang followed the modus operandi of installing a skimmer in teller machines, where debit cards are inserted by users, and a micro camera covering the keypad to capture the PIN. Using these details, they cloned debit cards of 61 persons, who used different ATM counters in Coimbatore, and withdrew a total of ₹32,57,861.

Lavasanthan was lodged in Coimbatore Central Prison in judicial custody till November 3, 2018. He was sent to a Sri Lankan refugee camp in Tiruchi on July 12, 2022 and continued to stay there till the court delivered the judgment on Monday (August 18, 2025). The court also slapped a fine of ₹500 on him.