Presumably, the men would have caused a loss of $5,000 to the true owner of that card.
/ A.M. Costa Rica wire services photo.
|
Two suspected of scamming with
cloned tourist credit cards jailed
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A judge of the Criminal Court of Santa Cruz* in Guanacaste ordered six months of preventive detention for two Brazilian men, surnamed Valerio-Da Silva and Tenorio-Da Silva, who appeared as suspects of the crimes of computer fraud, counterfeit currency and use of the fake ID.
On July 14th, as A.M. Costa Rica reported, the judicial agents, after investigations, surveillance and follow-up of the suspects, arrested the men in a hotel in Flamingo Beach* in Guanacaste.
The case involved people who were staying in hotels elsewhere who had been scammed by crooks using cloned credit cards.
According to the research, the owners of the original cards are tourists who happened to have been in other countries. They were scammed using data capture technology when the information on the credit cards was stolen.
That information on the duplicate, cloned cards were used to make purchases in Costa Rica.
Also, the agents confiscated several credit cards, printers, and skimmers, the device used to capture data from the magnetic strips of legitimate credit cards.
According to the prosecutors' report, the cloning occurred between May 17 and July 11, when the suspects devised a plan to falsify credit and debit bank cards.
July 2 at a Flamingo Beach hotel one of the suspects, Valerio-Da Silva, is accused of using a false ID supposedly of Brazilian origin.
Later, both suspects induced a hotel employee to make an error, managing to pay the lodging and food with a bank card that they knew belonged to someone else, according to the allegations.
Presumably, the men would have caused a loss of $5,000 to the true owner of that card.
--------------------
Have you heard about credit cards scamming? We would like to know your
thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com
|
|
