Fraudsters duplicated thousands of JCB credit cards issued in Taiwan and used them to conduct transactions on Yahoo Japan's online auction site from October last year, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday.
Card issuers affected by the credit card fraud included Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託), EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行), Fuhwa Bank (復華銀行 ) and Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), the report said.
The report did not say how much money was stolen in the scam.
Victims
The banks said they would not collect payments from victims in the credit card fraud, as long as card holders could prove that they did not carry out the transactions, the report said.
A group of fraudsters intercepted the card information through card readers or online gaming sites, it added.
As payments of less than ?30,000 (US$245) by JCB cards can be transacted offline -- meaning that there is no need to check with the card issuing banks -- fraudulent transactions are not easily discovered or traced, the report said.
Offline transactions
After the card scam was discovered, JCB International Credit Card Co announced it would no longer accept offline transactions by JCB cards issued outside Japan, the report said.
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