Arraignment of five men in credit card racket:
Exposé of LTTE’s new Mafia cloak
By Manjula FERNANDO
The recent arrests of five men of Malaysian and Sri Lankan origin in
Australia, in connection with a sophisticated international credit card
skimming racket, could be an expose of the LTTE’s transformation into a
global mafia and its continuing global criminal activities.
Although the details are yet to be revealed of the ‘nerve cell’ from
where these arrested men - all Tamils as far as the locked up Lankans
are concerned - were being string-puppeted, the group have had their
network operations in places where the LTTE concentration is
disturbingly high, Canada, Britain and the western Europe.
The global fraud scheme involved credit card numbers stolen in
Britain being emailed to Australia and encoded onto blank ‘Coles Myer’
and ‘Crown cards’, which were then used to withdraw cash at Automated
Teller Machines (ATMs), the Australian media reported.
These men have also stolen credit card information of Australian
citizens and transmitted details overseas to their other wings and
criminal cells.
Of the five men, three were key members of the Australian wing of the
global syndicate.
Their arrests last Sunday is reported to be a massive blow to the
operations of the criminal wing.
The Sydney police took into custody two more individuals aged 22 and
28 on Wednesday in connection with the skimming racket, bringing the
total number arrested so far to 27.
During the trial of the three men, the court heard more than 1,500
credit and debit card details were stolen in the scheme to fleece major
banks. These three are said to be masterminds of the scam which the
police identified as one of the largest credit card skimming rackets in
Australia. They have lived on refugee status.
One of the arrested had installed a skimming device in his
Strathfield grocery store. Police has also described a Sri Lankan man
arrested that day as an “international organiser” for the syndicate, and
a Canadian national as a “technician”.
The masterminds, Karan Nada, 42, of Endeavour Hills, Ramesh
Rasanayagam, 32, of Hallam, and Udayakumar Vivekanandan, 32, all pleaded
guilty. All three were handed jail terms but the jail terms of
Rasanayagam and Vivekanandan were suspended by the Judge.
According to Herald Sun, ‘Judge Roy Punshon said he was guarded about
Nada’s prospects of rehabilitation given he had committed similar
offences before. A card skimmer was found at his house in 2006.
He jailed Nada for 16 months and ordered that he serve at least 10
months.
The judge said Rasanayagam, a father of two and now a permanent
resident, suffered post traumatic stress after being kidnapped in Sri
Lanka and was entitled to a discount for co-operating with police. He
was given a suspended 18-month jail term.
Vivekanandan’s immigration status was suspended pending the outcome
of the fraud case. But Judge Punshon said he was entitled to mercy and
suspended his 12-month jail term.
Some of the arrested Sri Lankans complaints to court of harassment
before their flight to Australia could imply that they had been members
of the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
The investigators found that the group had withdrawn $40,000, made up
317 fake cards and tried to steal another $70,000 across Victoria, New
South Wales, Queensland and the ACT in 2008.
Three homes were raided across Pendle Hill, Strathfield and Auburn
where police seized Eftpos terminals, laptops, mobile phones, and PIN
copying technology. Cash, falsified travel documents and Canadian credit
cards were also seized. The material seized also included 18,000 blank
and counterfeit credit cards.
Leading international counter terror expert Prof. Rohan Gunaratna in
an interview with the Sunday Observer last month said the LTTE’s main
source of income is human smuggling but their international criminal
activities include bank, credit card and cheque fraud since
contributions from sympathetic Tamil diaspora had dwindled after the
conflict ended in May 2009.
“The LTTE needs funds to pay rent for its offices, travel for its
activists, maintain their families and hire lawyers, lobbyists, former
politicians, former diplomats and others that advance their aims and
objectives. The LTTE superstructure overseas that supported the LTTE in
Sri Lanka is determined to continue the fight by other means. The tools
they use include constituency (electorate) pressure, financial
inducements, dissemination of disinformation and misinformation and
lobbying and campaigning Western politicians, officials, journalists and
human rights activists.”
He said without money and other assets, the LTTE will cease to exist. |