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Police arrested overseas credit card counterfeiters and confiscated stolen credit cards of credit defaulters.
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Police arrested a gang of credit card swindlers who have fed invalid credit cards with card information of Americans and used them. This case proves that card information flows out across borders and if you have only the card information, credit cards can be forged just like cash and used freely. The credit card swindle involved criminal rings of three countries: A Korean credit card forging band; Russian credit card information dealers and American credit card information leakers.
The arrested Korean credit card forgers were introduced to Russians, self-assumed ¡°anti-Americans,¡± by another domestic credit card counterfeiting group, paying W50 million in commission. According to the police, the Russians and Korean card forgers had the same goal of ¡°pulling out money from the rich U.S and sharing it between them.¡± Although they called themselves ¡°anti-Americans,¡± the Russians sold card information of American people at US$90 per case. Contact with the Russians, transfer of card information and payment were all conducted through the Internet. Credit card swindlers did business based on thorough "credibility."
According to the police, one of the Korean forgers stated that the Russian people had introduced themselves as employees of a credit card company and said that they had acquired the traded information from colleagues working in the U.S. It means that American and Russian card company employees had sold the information of their customers. The domestic card swindlers were able to forge credit cards with Americans¡¯ information thanks to overflowing invalid cards, which were produced due to reckless issuance of card companies. Invalid credit cards are suspended cards of credit delinquents. Those cards can be purchased at W10,000 per piece on the Internet, the police said.
The card forger ring input foreigners¡¯ information to invalid cards and turned them into valid ones. This card forgery takes about 10 seconds: Inserting cards into a card member management machine called ¡°Encoder¡± and then inputting Americans¡¯ information. Credit cards have personal information in the magnetic line on the backside. The information in the magnetic line can be easily deleted or saved like with a floppy disk. The purchase of goods with forged card was the mission of other people. The forgers lured buyers by saying ¡°It is the patriotic way to earn foreign currency because money will flow in to Korea from abroad,¡± the police said. The 20 buyers traveled across the country to purchase jewelry, pre-paid highway toll cards and cultural gift certificates because they can be easily cashed in the private money market.
Their¡¯ several month-long swindling activities were detected because American card companies had notified their Korean counterparts of irregular card use and the Korean police were led on by highway toll cards, which were intensively purchased with forged credit cards.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency arrested Thursday 21 people including a 42-year-old man identified as Kwon and 34-year-old man identified as Kim who illegally earned W350 million. The police booked five buyers, including 31-year-old man identified as Seo, without detention. Credit card companies say that until the widespread use of smart cards, which are difficult to forge, there is no clear way to prevent card forgery but to thoroughly check them after use.
(Jang Il-hyun, ihjang@chosun.com )
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