CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

LTTE IS INVOLVED IN CREDIT CARD FRAUD IN KENYA

By Walter Jayawardhana

The Daily Nation in Kenya revealed that the 40 million Shilling annual credit frauds in the country is shared by Sri Lanka’s liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam terrorists with other fraudsters.

Reporting about a Norwegian Passport holding LTTE member the newspaper said, “Early this year, a suspected operative of the Sri Lankan separatist terror group — Liberation Tamil Tigers of Elam (LTTE) — Balakumar Poluthurai was arrested at 680 Hotel after he attempted to pay his bills using different fake credit cards. He is also believed to have withdrawn an unknown amount of cash using the cards.”

He is also believed to have withdrawn an unknown amount of cash using the cards and had 72 fake credit cards, when arrested the newspaper reported, July 25.

The African newspaper further said, “On July 8 this year, Delhi police busted a credit fraud syndicate and arrested three Nigerians who were using cloned cards to buy expensive mobile phones. The Delhi Police recovered mobile phones with instructions and PIN numbers from Kenya.

“These incidents are just a fraction of credit and ATM card fraud cases perpetrated by an increasing number of organised international and local syndicates. So serious is the problem that the United Nations Office in Nairobi (UNON) regularly posts advisories to visiting staff to be careful whenever they use credit cards in Kenya.

“According to the Kenya Credit and Debit Card Association chairp Catherine Mogambi, of the Sh35 billion transacted through credit cards in 2007 in Kenya, about Sh40 million is lost to credit card fraudsters annually.”

Waiters, cashiers, petrol station attendants and other staff who handle cards are believed to work with the fraudsters in swiping cards from customers through a gadget that “reads” the account information encoded in the magnetic strip at the back, then make duplicate cards.

Cases abound of ATM card holders who find thousands of shillings withdrawn from their accounts at night in places they have never been to. And more often than not, the victims stop following up on their money due to lengthy investigation processes, the report further said.

And, according to the head of the Banking Fraud Investigations Unit, Paul Ndambuki, the syndicates are mainly operated by people from Eastern Europe, West Africa and Asia, in collaboration with Kenyans. Several cases of credit card fraud by syndicates operating in Kenya have been detected in the United Arab Emirates and Dubai, the newspaper said in its issue of July 25.

“Most of the cases involve international credit cards lost in Europe, but transactions are conducted in Kenya. However, we have been receiving several reports from victims in Kenya who report that withdrawals were made from their bank accounts although they had their ATM cards when it happened.,” he said.

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