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An ex computer science student has been jailed for six years for conspiracy to steal and defraud.
Anup Patel had over 19,000 stolen card and PIN details, stolen from British cardholders.
Police believe that Patel managed to defraud cardholders of £2million pounds, although the potential loss could have been closer to £16million had the fraud not been intercepted.
It is believed that the majority of card details were stolen by concealing fake payment terminals with hidden data readers in petrol stations around the M25. Cameras had also been drilled into the ceilings near the card readers to capture PIN details. The stolen information was then used to make fraudulent cards which were then shipped abroad using a network of couriers.
The fraudulent cards were more effective abroad, where chip and pin has not been widely implemented outside of Western Europe; detectives working on this case discovered links to criminal gangs in Thailand, Eastern Europe and Turkey.
Police began investigating Patel raided his premises at Croydon House Business Centre in South London in 2006, where they found thousands of magnetic strips, blank plastic cards and the 19,000 stolen card details. Other equipment also included holograms and card printers as well as examples of the corrupted payment terminals used to steal the card details. Some of the equipment recovered by the City of London police is pictured, right.
The Times newspaper has also revealed that whilst on the run Patel taunted Detective Sargeant Simon Russen, in similar scenes to the film Catch Me If You Can, based on the story of the famous con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. Patel. Patel called DS Russen, the senior officer working on the case and likened his crimes to the film, saying “Catch me if you can” before then hanging up.
Patel then handed himself in after he found that conspirators working alongside him has already been arrested at London airports and in Thailand. During the court case it was revealed that Patel had already served 2 years in jail for committing credit card fraud in France, 10 years previously. Another man, Anthony Thomas of Clapham, London who had 65 previous convictions for petty crime was also convicted for delivering the fraudulent cards abroad.
The case highlights he problem of fraud as a global problem, as well as the need for Chip and Pin to be implemented internationally. APACS commented: “Without the security benefits provided by chip-and-PIN, counterfeit and lost and stolen card fraud would undoubtedly have continued to grow unchecked every year.”
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