Nadarajah Nanthakumar, aged 34, Kisok Thavarajah, aged 25, and Jahamithra Visvanathan, aged 25, had fitted two devices to the cash machine at Barclays, High Street, Sutton.
One was a ‘Lebanese loop’ device designed to prevent bank cards from coming out of the machine and the other was an iPod Nano to record victims keying in their PIN.
Two women on their way to work on Friday, 13 November 2015 stopped at the ATM between 07:35-07:45hrs to check the balance on their accounts.
When they came to use the machine, they found they were unable to retrieve their cards and believed the machine had swallowed them. They both continued to work to return to the bank later that morning to report what had happened only to be informed that a total of £4,400 had been stolen from their accounts - most of their money withdrawn from Barclays in Alexandra Road, Wimbledon.
However, the suspects hadn’t reckoned with Sutton borough’s CCTV cameras – and the persistence of the officers determined to bring the culprits to justice.
Sutton Central PC Colin Farmer, who led the investigation, used the CCTV system to identify a BMW car which he suspected of being connected to the fraud. It was through this vehicle that a number of suspects were identified.
Building a case to put before the Courts involved PC Farmer trawling through many hours of CCTV footage to track the suspects on foot near the Cock & Bull pub in Sutton Town Centre and in their vehicle as it drove away from Sutton Town Centre on the 13 November as they made their way to withdraw the money in Wimbledon.
At Croydon Crown Court on Friday, 23 September, all three were sentenced after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud.
Nanthakumar (16.03.1982), of Edgehill Road, Mitcham, and Thavarajah (07.05.1991), of Brixton Road, Lambeth, were sentenced to ten and eight months’ imprisonment respectively. Visvanathan (23.11.1990), of Dalton Avenue, Mitcham, received four months’ imprisonment suspended for two years.