PHUKET, 16 April 2013 – 3 foreign men have been arrested in this southern resort province for forgery of credit cards.
The men were apprehended at their residence inside a golf club in Kathu district. Evidence seized includes 70 fake credit cards, notebook computers, credit card readers, code readers, and cashes worth 6,000 Euros and 130,000 baht. A quantity of dried marijuana was also seized.
Phuket police said the men wandered the Thai provinces that were tourist destinations, and attached code readers to ATM machines in the provinces. When foreign tourists withdraw money from the afflicted ATMs using credit cards, the men were able to retrieve the cards’ information. The data is used to make forged cards that can be used to withdraw money and make purchases. The data can also be sold to the worldwide network of credit card defrauders.
Each of the 70 cards confiscated by police was able to produce 200,000 baht of cash. This amounted to 14 million baht in damages.
2 of the suspects were French, and one was Tunisian. They were aged between 22 and 31 years.
