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SCMP Reporter

POLICE believe Hong Kong is being used as a centre for the production of blank counterfeit credit cards following the seizure of 90 bogus cards with a total spending limit of about $5 million.

  The operation, by a specialist team from the Commercial Crime Bureau, comes just three months after a similar number of counterfeit cards bound for the Japanese market were seized.

  Chief Inspector Peter Barnes said a Thai woman, 29, and a Chinese man, 36, were arrested at Kai Tak airport on Thursday afternoon as they tried to board a flight to Bangkok.

  A bag belonging to the couple was found to contain a carton of cigarettes with four of the packets stuffed with counterfeit cards.

  Forty of the cards were encoded with account details belonging to genuine accounts held in the United States, Canada and Britain.

  The remainder of the cards were blank and had not been encoded.

  Mr Barnes said police believed the Hong Kong syndicate which had given the couple the cards was triad-controlled and supplying a gang in Thailand, where it is not against the law to possess a fake credit card.

  The cards were printed in the name of many well-known institutions such as Chase Manhattan and Citibank, and had an average spending limit of $10,000.

  In April, a similar number of cards with a similar spending limit were seized following the arrest of couriers travelling to Japan, where it is also legal to possess bogus credit cards.

  ''These two arrests reflect the growing trend towards producing counterfeit credit cards and obviously these two couriers arrested on Thursday were trusted and had clear records so as not to attract suspicion,'' Mr Barnes said.

  He said the arrests were a result of a one-month investigation which began after police started gathering intelligence on ''a certain individual'' and suspicions of a credit card scam were aroused.

  He said blank cards would be valuable to people who had access to corrupt employees working in banks who could supply account details.

  ''Tracking the suppliers or producers of base cards [blank cards] is very difficult and we have never been able to neutralise such a producer in Hong Kong, but at the same time we have never suspected before now that they were being produced here,'' Mr Barnes said   It is understood that most base cards in the region had until recently been produced in China.

  Embossed cards are sold in Thailand for about $4,000 and blank cards sell for about $500.

  It is believed that many people use fake travel documents in combination with several fake credit cards.

  ''Often it would be the case that people obtain a passport in a false name and then order counterfeit credit cards to match,'' Mr Barnes said.

  Worldwide losses to counterfeit credit card fraud last year amounted to US$283 million (HK$2.18 billion).

  In Hong Kong alone about US$5.4 million was lost last year.

  Mr Barnes said Hong Kong had long been used as a processing centre for fake cards.

  The two people arrested in the latest operation are in custody.



Fake credit card ring at work in territory