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Police crack credit card forgery ring
ORGANIZED CRIME:
More than 60,000 counterfeit credit cards were seized by police in a raid at an apartment in Taoyuan City. The gang's leader was also arrested
STAFF WRITER
Sunday, May 20, 2001, Page 1
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Police yesterday show the more than 60,000 forged credit cards they seized in Taoyuan on Friday.
PHOTO: CHU YU-PING, TAIPEI TIMES
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Police seized more than 60,000 forged credit cards in northern Taiwan in the largest-ever raid of its kind, a spokesman for the National Police Administration said yesterday.
Acting on a tip-off, police swooped on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Taoyuan City on Friday night, recovering more than 60,000 forged credit cards and more than 100,000 semi-finished forged cards, as well as sophisticated counterfeiting equipment.
Lin Chen-yi (ªL®¶¯q), 40, the mastermind behind the forgery ring, was arrested and turned over to the district prosecutor's office.
Police administration officials said the ring manufactured a record number of forged cards, emulating cards from every major card-issuing bank in Taiwan.
They added that the forgery technique is one of the most sophisticated ever discovered, producing cards almost impossible to recognize as fakes with the naked eye.
The officials said the ring relied on a member surnamed Sung (§º), who works in a department store in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan, to download key credit card information from store customers.
They said that the production of the forged cards took only around 10 minutes and that the counterfeit cards were then sold to downstream rings at NT$20,000 (US$608) for two cards.
Police administration officials said that the forged cards have already been used all over Southeast Asia.
Statistics show that Taiwan lost up to NT$3 billion (US$91.18 million) last year alone because of forged cards, or three times the world average.
One reason for the prevalence of credit card fraud in Taiwan is that penalties are much lighter than elsewhere in Asia.
Frequently, those convicted of credit card fraud are given suspended sentences or are only fined.
In contrast, the same crimes would earn a jail sentence of 20 years in Malaysia or 14 years in Hong Kong.
In order to toughen the penalties for credit card fraud, Oung Kuang-huei, president of the National Credit Card Center, has called on the Executive Yuan and the Ministry of Justice to amend the law by classifying the production of forged credit cards as a form of "counterfeiting currency."
The crime is currently classified as "forgery of documents" -- a far less serious charge.
The cards seized this time, if they had been circulated in the market, could have caused losses of more than NT$1 billion (US$30.38 million) if NT$50,000 worth of goods had been purchased per card.
Police administration officials said that in light of the rampant forgery of credit cards and its damage to domestic finance, police will widen their investigations to help curb the practice.
Although there is severe competition between criminal rings involved in credit card forgery, they nevertheless frequently cooperate with one another to foil police investigations and evade capture.
This makes it necessary for there to be a big investment of police manpower to crack these cases, the officials said.
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