Other day i was listening to a speaker that Pakistan lacked good financial policy and proper anti-money laundering laws that was the reason most of the international players such as Paypal hesitate to operate in Pakistan. I recalled after reading this news item that couple of Pakistanis have been spotted by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for using unlawfully fake credit cards in Pakistan and abroad and doing bulk shopping.
National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C) of FIA arrested five people for using these credit cards making use of technological gadgets. It was revealed after their arrest that their 3 partners (Syed Anwer Sherazi, Engineer Rashid Khan, Sarfraz Shah) who work in Italy are also involved in this criminal activity. Those who have been arrested are Muhammad Rafique, Yousaf Aslam, Muhammad Farhan, Khurram Shahzad and Maqsood Alam
FIA arrested Farhan and Rafique when they were using counterfeit credit card for purchasing mobile phones at the Hafeez Center, Lahore. Rafique told the investigators that he and Anwar Shah went to Italy in 1998 where they met a Pakistani Anwar Shah who was already involved in looting people electronically.
In December 2011, they purchased mobilephones in bulk using the 9 counterfeit credit cards. Later they purchased a machine from Bangkok that reads, writes and pastes data on magnetic strip, a printer for printing on blank credit cards, large number of blank credit cards and two laptops. The culprits entered Pakistan on March 13, 2012.
After reaching Pakistan, they purchased stolen credit data from a website and wrote the data on the blank credit cards using the device they bought from Bangkok.
A team of FIA agents will soon leave for Italy to arrest the remaining members of the gang, in this regard, FIA has already communicated to Interpol for the help.
