Tuesday - September 16, 2008

Fraudsters bought their own gas stations and stole thousands of customers’ credit card details.

WELL TALK ABOUT AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT. 

Take a good look at their names and tell me if ANY are pronounceable.

THREE FRAUDSTERS JAILED FOR ELABORATE GAS STATION CREDIT CARD SCAM
A gang of fraudsters bought their own petrol stations and stole thousands of customers’ credit card details in a £254,000 scam

By Tom Peterkin

The three Sri Lankans were involved in taking over petrol stations or bribing staff at others to fit cameras in the ceilings above the shop counters to film motorists typing in their pin numbers.

They used sophisticated electronic devices to intercept account information and clone credit cards which were then used around the world.

Somabalu Jeyaganesh, a 34-year-old asylum seeker, his cousin Ariyakunathasa Pirathesan, 28, and Sivanesan Mayilvaganam, 27, had converted a semi-detached house in Coventry into a “fraud factory” that affected 4,500 customers.

Judge Martin Beddoe jailed Pirathesan, a British passport holder from Coventry, for four and a half years commenting that he was a “significant player” in the fraud who distributed equipment and oversaw the work of his criminal associates. Jeyaganesh of Liverpool and Mayilvaganam, an illegal immigrant based in Mitchum, were both jailed for three years each and recommended for deportation.

The trio had all admitted conspiracy to defraud between January 1 last year until March 13 this year.

The judge said although the fraud was estimated at £254,000 the potential loss could have been as much as £3.5million.

“This was a worldwide fraud to leach money from the genuine card holders’ accounts,” Judge Beddoe told Southwark Crown Court.

“This was a determined, sophisticated and well-organised operation and this particular form of credit card fraud is becoming widespread.”

The men were arrested during a police raid at the “factory” in Winsford Avenue, Allesley, Coventry on March 12 this year.

Prosecutor Chris Coltart said: “Officers found a wealth of electronic equipment used in the cloning of debit and credit cards.”

Items seized from the house plus those from a storage facility in Leicester included digital cameras, an ISDN device and laptop computers.

The fraud began at the “point of purchase”, where sophisticated technology was used to capture the card details.

The information was downloaded onto a computer, imposed onto blank plastic cards and the pin number was then written onto the cards.

Mr Coltart said the fraud centred around petrol stations in the West Midlands and London.

“This was done by fraudsters acquiring petrol stations and running them as legitimate businesses or by bribing staff that worked there already.”

When officers arrived at the credit card cloning factory, Jeyaganesh was found sleeping in one of the back bedrooms.

A search of his room revealed a large quantity of white plastic cards fitted with magnetic strips, memory sticks which contained hundreds of compromised card details, a laptop, a digital recorder, a card reader and disks.

Officers also found a BP staff name badge.

Stashed around the house cops found documents containing card details which contained Jeyaganesh’s and Mayilvaganam’s fingerprints.

A storage facility in Leicester, registered in the name of Pirathesan, was also raided and contained a hoard of similar items.

Pirathesan was found to have made 29 foreign trips to the USA, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka between January 2006 and December 2007 to pick up payments from criminals using the cards abroad.

Mr Coltart said: “The international dimension of the fraud was encapsulated by the stamps in Mr Pirathesan’s passport.”

http://tinyurl.com/5tbvhk

A “commercial valuation” of a petrol station in Bootle, Liverpool, was also found amongst Jeyaganesh’s papers as well as travel cards showing he had been travelling between London, Liverpool and Coventry.

Mayilvaganam admitted being responsible for embossing the blank cards.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/16/2008 at 11:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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