By Na Jeong-ju
Police said Thursday that they have apprehended nine people on charges of cloning some 200 credit cards using personal information of foreigners that they had bought from foreign websites.
They used the cards at bars, restaurants and malls for about seven months from June last year. They also secured cash by selling products that they had purchased online with the cloned cards, according to the international crime unit at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
The agency didn’t reveal the addresses of the foreign websites to prevent copycat crimes. It said it has asked telecom regulators to block people from accessing the suspected websites and is cooperating with Interpol to investigate them.
Some of the nine scammers met in jail. After being released, they bought a machine that can duplicate cards’ magnetic strips and attracted more colluders.
“They paid $27 for personal information and created some 200 cloned cards,” an officer said. “They also made fake driver’s licenses and identity cards to evade investigators.”
Police suspect they used the cloned cards over 1,300 times, mostly in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. The damage amounts to some 200 million won ($189,000).
The officer said it took a relatively long time to detect the crime because the cards were made using foreigners’ personal information.
The scam was made possible because most shops here use magnetic strip card readers, which are more vulnerable to fraud. Firms are moving to issue payment devices that can only read cards with integrated-circuit chips.