Brits Charged With Fake ATM Withdrawls

[DREW]

Brits charged over fake ATM-card withdrawals

PHUKET CITY: A father, mother and son from the UK have been charged with using fake electronic cards to withdraw more than 100,000 baht from ATMs while on holiday in Phuket.

Capt Supachai Petchkul of Phuket City Police Station today told the Gazette that police received an anonymous phone call at 1:40 am yesterday reporting that two foreign men were behaving strangely in front of the Kasikorn Bank branch on Chanacharoen Rd, near the Robinson department store.

Police arrived to find Mark Hubert Veerasawmy, 44, and his son Sonny, 19, withdrawing cash from the bank’s ATM. Both were wearing small white masks that covered the nose and mouth, Capt Supachai said.

The pair were found in possession of 15 withdraw slips, 10,000 baht cash and 35 fake ATM cards with a magnetic strip on one side and a two-digit and a four-digit number handwritten on the other side, he said.

“We took them to the police station, but we forgot to take their mobile phone, which they used to call Jennifer Anne Chapman, 31, from England, to tell her that they had been arrested,” Capt Supachai explained.

After questioning the father and son, police moved to the Mukda hotel in the Phun Pol area of Phuket City to search the two rooms the family was staying in.

“We went to their hotel and found his wife and baby girl, about two to three years old, in front of the hotel. We searched their rooms and found more than 100,000 baht in bundles separated by rubber bands,” Capt Supachai said.

He alleged that the phone call gave Ms Chapman the chance to dispose of the machine used to encode the fake cards with bank account numbers and PIN numbers.

“It would be great if we could get the machine because it would be useful as evidence. However, a motorcycle taxi driver parked near the hotel told police that [before police arrived] he saw Ms Chapman walking along the road with a black bag, but she returned to the hotel without it,” Capt Supachai said.

The three were charged with cheating by using fake electronic cards. “The three today signed papers acknowledging the charges,” Capt Supachai said.

He added that they are now being held at Phuket Provincial Court.

The baby girl, who police did not name, has been handed over to the British embassy to be returned to the UK.


Beware. Sounds like they have been skimming card readers or ATM machines and then making cloned cards.

There is a lot of this going on in the UK where they probably 'Learned their Trade' before going on their nice Holiday.

Regards

Drew

[Soupdragon]

Why did they try this right in the middle of phuket town where many people will see them. Hundreds of out of the way ATMs they could have used without drawing attention to themselves, not too bright.

[LivinLOS]

Using the Kasikorn machines outside the front of the (glass fronted) kasikorn bank in jungceylon... Genius !!

[pablo]

Top notch police work also.

Allowing the suspect to phone his accomplice, in order to destroy evidence. 5555

[TV Channel 11]

Originally Posted by LivinLOS

Using the Kasikorn machines outside the front of the (glass fronted) kasikorn bank in jungceylon... Genius !!

It was not near Jungceylon in Patong, rather near Robinson in Phuket City:

MiniVDO: Three foreigners were arrested in Phuket with fake ATM cards.
To see or download mini-video, go to ThaisNews

Two foreign men, Mark Hubert Veerasawmy, aged 44 and Sonny Veerasawmy, aged 19, were questioned by Phuket police after they were arrested with electronic cards looking like credit or ATM cards in front of an ATM machine of Thai Farmers’ (Kasikorn) Bank on Chanacharoen road in the city. They are both British passport holders. The two men were arrested after police received reports of suspicious men who had pieces of cloth covering their faces with safety helmets on in front of the ATM machine. When police arrived, one man managed to flee on a motorbike. The two men are alleged to have possessed or used the fake ATM cards. Further investigation led to the detainment of another British passport holder Jennifer Anne Chapman, age 31, who stayed at a small hotel in Phoolpol area. The suspects denied all charges.


from Andaman News TV11 (VHF dial) at 8.30am & local Cable TV channel 1 + maybe FM90.5 Radio Thailand 6pm, broadcast to Phang Nga, Krabi & Phuket provinces, & possibly FM108 Mazz Radio 7.30pm in Phuket, Tuesday 19th February 2008 & Êӹѡ¢èÒÇ ¡ÃÁ»ÃЪÒÊÑÁ¾Ñ¹¸ì......ThaisNews »ÃШÓÇѹ¾Ø¸·Õè 20 ¡ØÁÀҾѹ¸ì 2551

[Dori]

Veerasawmy, that's a funny English name, I bet that's up there with the smith & jones's.

From memory, last year there was a big bust in phuket where the police caught a sindicate of indians (or something) with 1000's blank cards, card readers and programmers

[Dori]

This story is from the Phuket Gazette, notice how quickly they are to advise their not Thai nationals
KATHU: Police have arrested three Sri Lankan men for credit card fraud, seizing more than 5,000 bogus credit cards allegedly encoded with information from real credit cards.

Police suspect the three men may be part of a much larger ring operating in popular tourists areas throughout Thailand and other parts of the world.

Pol Lt Col Boonlert Onklang of the Kathu Police identified the three suspects as Pathmathas Ganeshamoorthy, 26; Srikanthan Veerasingam, 29; and Sivagnanam Gnanakanthan, 35. The passports of all three men revealed that they had been frequent visitors to Thailand.

Col Boonlert said that police arrested Ganeshamoorthy and Veerasingam at the northern end of Thaweewong Rd in Patong early Tuesday evening after a closed-circuit TV camera had caught the pair using a fake credit card to draw money from an ATM machine in front of the Kon Thai Pub in Karon.

At the time of the arrest, one of the men was sitting in a silver-colored Honda car; the other was on the beach.

A search of the vehicle uncovered a notebook computer, 2,703 fake white credit cards and three flash drives. After the arresting officers turned down a 2-million-baht bribe in exchange for their release, the men were questioned, Col Boonlert said.

The two men told police the cards and equipment belonged to Gnanakanthan, who had arrived in Phuket earlier that day, Col Boonlert said.

The men had picked up Gnanakanthan at the airport and dropped him off at his hotel, the Pen Villas in Surin, he added.

A visit to Mr Gnanakanthan’s room just after midnight early on January 3 uncovered an additional 2,533 fake credit cards. Of these, 483 were green and the remainder white. Unlike the cards seized earlier that day, all the cards were were marked with a four-digit number.

Police also seized an MSR206 magnetic strip card reader and encoder.

All three men were arrested and are now being held in at Kathu Police Station. They were taken to Phuket Provincial Court yesterday afternoon and each was charged with one count of electronic card forgery and one count of possessing a fraudulent electronic card with intent to use.

All three men denied the charges. Bank officers will inspect the cards tomorrow and determine how many of them have been used. It is still too early to estimate the cost of the men’s activities to Phuket businesses, Col Boonlert said.

Police believe the Sri Lankans might have been operating as part of a larger fraud ring, he added.

The cards seized in Phuket were similar to cards seized in earlier raids in Bangkok and Chon Buri. Those cards were encoded with data from genuine credit cards issued in the UK, Col Boonlert said.

[Dori]

I'll give the curry munchers credit though, they know how to collect money, even though it may be by illigal means.

[Poppy]

I feel for the poor child involved, she must have been terrified, the parents should be really ashamed of themselves!