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Emperor Palpatine
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Thursday December 16, 2010
'Go shopping' card syndicate busted
By TAN SIN CHOW
[email protected]
GEORGE TOWN: A cloned credit card syndicate which sends its members on shopping sprees overseas to buy branded goods and then sells them at discounted prices has been busted. Ten syndicate members, who were believed to be planning their next foreign trip with more than 170 credit cards, were arrested in two hotel rooms here.
The nine Malaysian men and a Vietnamese woman, aged between 21 and 51, were picked up at 11pm on Monday following a tip-off. Penang police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Wira Ayub Yaakob said 171 cloned foreign-issued credit cards with a total spending limit of close to RM2.7mil were seized.
He said police also seized four Hong Kong passports and a Singaporean passport, which are believed to be fake, as well as a laptop. He said it was the biggest such seizure by Penang police this year, adding that the syndicate was believed to have been in operation for more than two years.
DCP Ayub said investigations showed that the suspects had previously travelled to Thailand to buy luxury and branded items using cloned cards. The suspects, who are given several cloned cards each, could have been eyeing Hong Kong and Singapore for their next shopping spree.
“Our investigation found that each card has US$$5,000 (RM15,675) in credit limit,” he told a press conference at the state police headquarters here yesterday. DCP Ayub said the modus operandi of the syndicate members was to bring back the items they bought overseas to Malaysia where they are sold at a cheaper rate.
He said the Vietnamese woman had been in the country for just about a month while the male suspects were from Penang, Kedah, Perak and Selangor. It is learnt that eight of the seized cloned cards had embedded microchips while the rest only had security magnetic strips. The suspects are currently under remand until tomorrow.
