Debit, credit card fraud racket busted in Jamaica

January 7, 2011•2 Minutes
RTC Director RTC Director

FOUR men are now in police custody following investigations by detectives from the Organised Crime Investigation Division (OCID) into a major debit and credit card fraud racket.

A 24-year-old man, who police said worked for a major bank, was last week arrested by OCID detectives on suspicion of conspiring with a fraud gang to pin debit cards that were fraudulently produced. He is expected to be questioned today.

“The cards were then used at various merchants to make purchases. Cards belonging to one bank but fraudulently pinned with another bank’s details were allegedly found in the man’s possession,” said the police in a statement late last night.

OCID detectives said that further investigations led them to the arrest of a 22-year-old man from Montego Bay, St James.

He was allegedly found with several debit cards belonging to bank customers who had already fallen victims to cloning and had lost several hundred thousand dollars. He is further alleged to have fraudulently pinned those cards.

The detectives said that increased card fraud in western Jamaica led them to arrest two men of Green Island, Hanover addresses. One of the men is said to be a student at the University of the West Indies.

These two men were allegedly found with credit and debit card manufacturing equipment, including:

 

     

  • One credit/debit card reader which is used for fraudulently encoding numbers on the magnetic strip of cards;

     

  • One Embossing machine, used for placing numbers on the plastic of fraudulently made credit cards;

     

  • Lists of credit card numbers belonging to customers of various banks;

     

  • One laptop computer used with the card reader to encode cards;

     

  • Fraudulent Florida driver’s license;

     

  • Fraudulent Visa card suspected to have been made by the two men.

     

The two are also accused of recently cloning the card of a foreign visitor to Jamaica. Charges totalling US$8,000 were then made to the card at various merchants in western Jamaica.

Source: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com

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