Two credit card fraudsters arrested

Chilaw police arrested two cybercriminals in Chilaw last morning for a for producing fake credit cards taking the data from original credit cards.

The suspects had used the fake credit cards to buy goods valued at hundreds of thousands rupees from supermarkets and had sold them at low prices later, police said.

The main suspect is a 45-year-old resident of Coreya Watte and the other suspect is a 22-year-old resident of Watawana.

The second suspect is a pump attendant at a petrol shed in the area and he had stolen the data from bank cards of its customers with a small device. The main suspect had produced the fake cards with the data provided by the second, police said. The pump attendant had been paid Rs. 2, 000 per data he got from a card and provided to the main suspect, police said.

They were arrested on complaints lodged by three victims. Four fake bank cards, computer accessories and a few of purchased goods were seized along with the suspects.

The main suspect is on bail for several crimes he had committed in other areas.

At the initial stage of the investigations, the banks had refused to accept that the money had been stolen from their customers’ accounts, police said.

A court order was obtained by police to check the monthly accounts of the victims, police said.

The arrest was made by Crime OIC (Chilaw) SI Gamini Wickremesinghe along with SI Andasuriya, Sergeants Nimal, Surasinghe, Ranjith and PCs Abeysinghe, Deshapriya, Wasantha and Sampath on the instructions of SP (Chilaw) Suramjith Kumarapeli, ASP Keerthi Bandara and CI (HQ) Wasantha Herath.