In Japan an international credit card fraud has come to
light in which about 1.44 billion yen or more than $13 million was illegally
withdrawn with forged credit cards from 1,400 automated teller machines in convenience
stores around the country.
The cash was withdrawn within a space of 5 am to 8 am by
more than 100 burglars on May 15. The time chosen avoided immediate detection
of criminals.
The thieves apparently went to ATMs like those found in
7-11s across Japan and swiped 1,600 counterfeit South African credit cards,
created using information from cards issued by South Africa's Standard Bank.
Since the money machines would only let them take about $900 at a time, the
hackers made thousands of withdrawal.
Suspecting the involvement of international criminal
organization, the police are planning to cooperate with overseas investigative
organizations.
According to Reuters Africa, Standard Bank is estimating its
total losses at 300 million rand ($19 million). The bank said none of its
customers will suffer the losses from the international fraud scheme.
The ATMs are in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Aichi, Osaka, Fukuoka and
other prefectures.
Police intend to identify the suspects by analyzing the
images recorded by security cameras. They also plan to examine how the credit
card data was leaked, in cooperation with the South African authorities via
Interpol.
The fraud came to light following a report from a bank that
installed some of the ATMs.
The heist comes as credit card networks like Visa and
MasterCard are trying to move world markets toward uniform acceptance of
chip-based cards, which are considered less vulnerable to fraud than magnetic
stripe cards.