Duo jailed for ATM card fraud
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A 42-year-old man and a 26-year-old man were sentenced to jail for 32 months at the District Court today (December 10) for conspiracy to steal.

The court heard that in March 2008, reports were made to the Police from local banks that some telephone cards were left inside ATMs while a number of suspicious cash withdrawal transactions were detected.

Officers of the Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB) took over the case for further enquiries and discovered that the telephone cards were encoded with overseas bank accounts and can be used as counterfeit ATM cards.

After in-depth investigations, Police arrested the two men at a hotel in Wan Chai on April 6. A total of 48 suspected counterfeit ATM cards encoded with overseas bank accounts and cash $215,300 were seized.

Further enquires led to the seizure of another 95 suspected counterfeit ATM cards at local banks, involving a total amount of about $1 million.

The two men were charged with conspiracy to steal. They were convicted of the charges and sentences were handed down today.

Police Report No. 4
Issued by PPRB

Ends/Wednesday, December 10, 2008
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