Indian nabbed at BIA with 110 magnet cards

by Jayampathy JAYASINGHE

An Indian national who had 110 magnet cards in his possession to turn out false credit cards was nabbed at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) by sleuths of the Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) when he arrived on a flight from Chennai on Friday around 7.30 pm.

When the police searched the suspect they found a device, an encoder that records data on credit cards used by most banks, Police Media Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana said.

He said the detection was made by Inspector Pushpakumara.

The Narcotics Bureau received a tip off from an informant. Police identified the suspect as Ponnathurai Mayuranan, an Indian national who said he was residing at Mannar Road at Nelumkulama, Vavuniya.

Police handed over the suspect to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for further investigations.

According to the police, there was a possibility of transferring the data of other credit cards to the magnetic cards to buy goods and withdraw large sums of cash without the cardholder’s knowledge.

Police have warned people not to lend their credit cards to others and be vigilant after presenting the credit card for a transaction. Customers should also ensure that credit cards should be swiped only once in their presence on the machine and they should keep track of their transactions so that it would not be misused. Last year a Romanian national and his consort wanted by the police in connection with a multi-million rupee credit card racket was arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport.

It was revealed that the couple had withdrawn large sums of money from local account holders without their knowledge. It was also revealed that the suspects had arrived in the country to withdraw the money of cricket fans who had arrived in the country to witness the International Cricket Council’s matches.