M
Mitsuhide Akechi
Guest
Jun 27, 2011
Turk jailed 7 years for credit card fraud of $360,000
By Khushwant Singh
Erdem Yildiz, 27, was jailed for seven years by a district court on Tuesday. The Turk had pleaded guilty to 10 charges of possessing and using counterfeit American Express credit cards for purposes of cheating. -- PHOTO: AFP
THEY arrived here from Turkey on March 18 this year and went shopping the very next day with their fake credit cards, buying more than $360,000 worth of mostly jewellery within two days.
Erdem Yildiz, 27, was jailed for seven years by a district court on Tuesday. The Turk had pleaded guilty to 10 charges of possessing and using counterfeit American Express credit cards for then purposes of cheating. His accomplice Erdinc Vidin is at large.
Investigations revealed that at a cafe in Turkey in February , Yildiz was offered 15,000 Turkey Lira (S$11,350) by ringleader Osman Ozturk to shop abroad with fake credit cards.
Yildiz and Vidin then flew to Ukraine with a stack of white plastic cards. There, they exchanged these for fake credit cards with a contact known only as Ahmet. The next day, they flew to Thailand, where they were instructed by another accomplice named Pasha to head here.
Together, they chalked up purchases amounting to $360,034. Some of their bigger purchases include charging $56,559 to their fake credit cards at Soo Kee Jewellery and $39,808 at Goldheart in Orchard Road.
Yildiz was arrested after buying nearly $100,000 of jewellery from the Love & Co shop in Suntec City in the afternoon of March 20 after the manager raised the alarm. Police found only a diamond ring valued at $4,028, a pair of wedding band rings worth $1,088 and an Apple Macbook Pro bought for $3,398 in his room at the Fortuna Hotel in Owen Road.
The court was not told what he did with the rest of the loot but private investigators say it is usual practice for accomplices to either fly off with the items or to quickly mail these off.
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