Credit Card Crackdown : 7 Tamils in the Gang

Credit Card Crackdown

Police nabs Ring leader and six others

Gayan Kumara Weerasinghe

The arrest of six suspects last week has exposed a major international credit card racket in which suspects have drawn millions of dollars using forged credit cards, police sources reveal.
The Special Police Investigation Team of the Criminal Investigation Department last week arrested six suspects on a tip off by a police informant.
Six suspects (all Tamils) including their alleged ring leader Ajith were arrested, when they were a floor tile sales shop at Nawala Road in Colombo, where they used forged credit cards to swindle money from bank accounts of foreign multi millionaires.
The Officer in Charge of the Special Police Investigation Unit, on receipt of this information consulted his superiors, DIG D.W. Prathapasinghe and the unit’s Director DIG Sisira Mendis who instructed the OIC to conduct a full investigation as frauds relating to Credit Cards of foreigners, specially those belonging to British citizens have become a menace to the extent of the Foreign Affairs Ministry officially informing the CID to take necessary action.

How it operates

As narrated by the police informant, this racket operates in the following manner: The gang of racketeers work in collaboration with the shop owner. They agree to use forged credit cards in the machine. The local cards which are forged, contains data stolen from the original owner. These data are obtained stealthily by using a reader which copies the number when the original card is used by its owner.
There are employees in shops and filling stations frequented by foreign multimillionaires who pass crucial information of the original card holders to members of the culprit teams.
At the tile sales shop at Nawala Road, a credit sale does not actually take place. Only a credit sale is being recorded. When a specific amount is being withdrawn from the ATM (using a Credit Card), the amount is shared by the culprits, including the shop owner. This racket of swindling money from the bank accounts of foreign multimillionaires had been going-on for the past three years.

Higher vigilance

This international large scale Credit Card racket was magnified when recently the wife of a Conservative Member of the British House of Representatives became a victim by losing a large sum of sterling pounds. Conservative MP Andrew Fellows raised a voice in the British Parliament to alert foreign countries of this racket and as a result the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Sri Lanka alerted the Sri Lankan Police Department to be vigilant on this issue.
With the arrest of the six gangsters including its leader at the Nawala Road tile sales shop the police recovered 20 forged credit cards in their possession.
The suspects were questioned at length by the CID. Following interrogation the gang leader Ajith’s palatial residence at Alutmawatha Road, Kotahena and three other similar houses belonging to Ajith in the same neighbourhood were searched and a further 200 forged credit cards were recovered by the police team. In addition the police took into custody a jeep worth Rs.20 million parked in the garden of one of his houses.
Ajith was one of the poorest in the area a few years ago until he suddenly became fabulously rich within a matter of three years. He began to live a luxurious life and frequented casino clubs with innumerable young women around him, but kept an illegal mistress in her mid forties in spite his being a young bachelor of 29 years of age.
Out of the other 5 suspects taken into custody along with Ajith, two are Tamil residents of Trincomalee; two are Tamil youths of Kotahena area while the other was a Tamil resident of Hatton. Investigating officers suspect that the two Tamils residents of Trincomalee are having links with the LTTE because they were in possession of photographs showing themselves in jungle military kits and carrying LMG T56 machine guns.
Investigations in this connection are continuing under the same Special Police Investigating team.

 

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