A GANG of credit card fraudsters has been smashed this week thanks to a sharp-eyed Petersfield policeman.
When Pc Tommy Tucker questioned two men parked on a double yellow line in Petersfield last October little did he realise it would lead to a £286,000 credit card scam which stretched across Europe and as far as India.
On Monday four men were convicted of conspiracy to defraud following a ten-month investigation led by Pc Tucker.
After the case he told The Herald that nearly 300 bogus credit and debit cards had been identified during the painstaking inquiries and the cost of the fraud could have run into millions of pounds.
The case began in October last year when Pc Tucker asked the two men for proof of identity and 23-year-old Mohammed Kanuga from Croydon, South London, produced an Abbey National debit card.
Pc Tucker quickly spotted the card as a fake and, after a visit to the Abbey National in Petersfield, he arrested both men.
The second man, Ketan Shah, 23, from Thornton Heath, South London, was also found to be in possession of counterfeit credit cards that had been used to obtain over £1,000 cashback from supermarkets in the area in the hour before the arrests.
A third man, Furqan Hussain, 21, of Croydon, South London, was later identified through CCTV footage and arrested.
The investigations into the fraud led officers to a South London petrol station.
A further man, 27-year-old Vikas Patel from Catford, South London, a cashier at a Total petrol station in West Wickham High Street, was also arrested.
Patel, a failed asylum seeker, was using his position to skim customersÕ credit cards through a machine that recorded the details held on the magnetic strip.
The information was then passed to someone who manufactured counterfeit cards.
The fake cards were then used to gain as much cash and as many goods as possible.
The cards were mainly used around London and the south of England, but some were used in Europe and India.
The police operation, including raids on the petrol station and other addresses in South London, identified 268 bogus credit cards and fraud to the value of £286,000.
Pc Tucker told The Herald this week: ÒWe believe the number of cards counterfeited at the garage were far higher than identified in the investigation and the cost of the fraud is far in excess of that disclosed.Ó
All four men were convicted at Winchester Crown Court on Monday of conspiracy to defraud.
Patel was sentenced to two yearsÕ imprisonment. The judge did not make a recommendation on whether he should be deported, saying he would allow the Home Office to make that decision.
Kanuga, Shah and Hussain were each sentenced to one yearÕs imprisonment.
In sentencing the men, Recorder Peter Towner said: This fraud is on a substantial scale and of such seriousness that only a custodial sentence is appropriate.Ó
Pc Tucker said after the case: The sentences passed should act as punishment to those involved and as a deterrent to others.Ó