Credit card fraud doubled in past year, police say

By Siham Al Najami, Staff Reporter
Published: March 14, 2009, 23:03

Dubai: More than 300 financial-related crimes were reported in 2008 with more than 600 people charged with such offencss, a senior police official said.

Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Rahman Al Nuaimi, Director of Dubai Police's Counter Economic Crimes Department, told Gulf News there were 322 financial-related cases last year while 602 individuals of different nationalities were charged.

In January 2009, 32 financial-related crimes were reported with 47 individuals charged with various kinds of crimes. While in February of this year, 30 cases were reported with 56 people charged, Lieutenant Colonel Al Nuaimi said.

The Department classifies economic related crime into three divisions: combating commercial fraud, combating deception and fraud and combating forgery.  The commercial fraud division includes intellectual property protection and trademark protection, he said.

The latest financial-related crimes were related to credit card fraud such as the arrest made last month by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of a member of a four-strong gang which specialised in counterfeiting credit cards and using them to buy expensive jewellery and watches.

In the same month more than 500 forged credit cards were recovered from two gangs in Dubai, who are accused of withdrawing "huge" sums of money from an ATM in a shopping mall.

On February 9, the police arrested the three other gang members in a nightclub, they had in their possession expensive goods, money and fake IDs.

Police also found memory cards, electronics, laptops and equipment used to clone credit cards and 146 blank cards ready to be counterfeited.

In a seminar held in January, Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Dubai Police's Deputy Commandant General, urged banks to issue credit cards with pin codes for all transactions as fraud cases had more than doubled in the last year.

Credit and debit card fraud cases went up from 32 registered cases in 2007 to 65 cases in 2008. Cases of document forgery, however, have fallen from 876 in 2007 to 523 in 2008.

The most common crimes involving credit and debit card reported by Dubai Police are the use of credit cards after being stolen or lost before the card holder reported the loss; the stealing of bank information by hacking into a credit card with the help of a skimmer (a machine that can read credit card information) and the theft of credit cards by courier delivery boys, which they sell at a cheap price to criminals.

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