Three men who operated a cloned debit card scheme out of a Methuen hotel have pleaded guilty in federal court to attempting to fraudulently withdraw more than $110,000 from New Hampshire ATMs.

Syed Hoque, 24, of Brooklyn, New York, Tharushan Nirmalachandran, 30, of Ile-Bizard, Quebec, and Aijtharan Raveendran, 29, of Toronto, Ontario, have pleaded guilty in New Hampshire federal court to participating in a conspiracy to commit bank fraud, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Scott W. Murray’s office.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Hoque, Nirmalachandran, and Raveendran conspired with others in April 2019 to withdraw money from bank customers’ accounts by using cloned debit cards at ATMs in Hudson, New Hampshire, near the Massachusetts border.

A cloned debit card is a gift card or other type of card that has been re-encoded to contain debit card information. Blank credit and debit or gift cards can be encoded with stolen credit and debit card information using a magnetic stripe reader machine. An MSR machine can read and write the information stored in the magnetic stripe on the back of credit and debit cards.

A witness reported to the Hudson Police Department on April 26 that a man later identified as Hoque drove his car through an ATM several times to make withdrawals, according to the U.S. attorney’s statement. Hudson police responded and found Hoque in his car at the ATM. The officer saw Hoque holding a cell phone that was displaying several sets of numbers on the screen, a large amount of cash on the front passenger seat of his car and several ATM or credit cards on the center console.

A search of Hoque’s phone revealed WhatsApp text messages from April 24-26, including a group message chain from April 26 that showed members of the conspiracy coordinating their activities as they withdrew money from ATMs with the cloned debit cards.

The trio operated out of a hotel room in Methuen, according to the statement, and hotel surveillance video showed Nirmalachandran and Raveendran carrying large duffle bags out of their hotel room early in the morning on April 27. Investigators later found duffle bags during a search of Nirmalachandran’s car that contained a portable MSR machine; 103 Visa, American Express and MasterCard gift cards, 96 of which contained cloned debit card information; $51,610 in U.S. currency; and a laptop computer. A later search of the computer revealed text files that contained over 170 debit card numbers.

In total, members of the conspiracy withdrew at least $43,980 and attempted to withdraw an additional $69,900 from other people’s bank accounts using cloned debit cards.

Hoque pleaded guilty on Dec. 13 and is scheduled to be sentenced on April 1. Nirmalachandran and Raveendran pleaded guilty in November and will be sentenced on Feb. 14 and Feb. 28, respectively.

“Fraudsters like these defendants cause serious damage by stealing money from their victim’s bank accounts,” Murray said in a statement. “They also drive up business costs and undermine confidence in our banking system.”

The Hudson and Methuen police departments assisted the U.S. Secret Service in the investigation.