The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Visakhapatnam News : Be wary of stolen credit cards, city police chief tells traders

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 08, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam

Be wary of stolen credit cards, city police chief tells traders

Staff Reporter

Stresses need for thorough verification to prevent the fraud

Registration of cases against shop employees likely
People told to lock their vehicles while parking

—Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam

TOUGH TALK: Police Commissioner N. Sambasiva Rao addressing a press conference in the city on Sunday.

Visakhapatnam: Police Commissioner N. Sambasiva Rao has asked commercial establishments to be wary of the transactions involving stolen and fake credit cards. Besides, ‘attention diverting’ gangs also seemed to be operating going by the modus operandi.

Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, he described the credit card offences as high-level white collar crime and international-level fraud and said the employees (at shops) were not even verifying the details of the persons making payment on the card.

Verifying sex, age and signature could lead to prevention of such transactions. In one case during last week, a woman had lost her credit card and before she got it blocked about Rs.35,000 of purchases were made. In another case, one fake and one stolen card seemed to have been used. The cards were of Malaysian origin. The Commissioner said booking cases against the employees of shops was under serious consideration for abetting such transactions. In some cases, such transactions were not even reported to the police.

Gang on prowl

Mr. Sambasiva Rao said analysis of some incidents during the past two, three days had indicated that a gang was resorting to crime diverting the attention of people. The miscreants divert attention showing a Rs.10 note or saying there was a stain on the clothes and make good with valuables.

Mr. Sambasiva Rao said in view of the burglaries during day and night, large number of police personnel were being deployed in an area at a time to increase visibility of the police. This had mixed results with some other area reporting offences.

He admitted that with stress on prevention detection was getting delayed.

The Commissioner wanted people to lock their vehicles and take important documents with them.

A random check by bulk deployment of police in Three, Four and Five town police stations on Sunday revealed that 30 per cent of the vehicles were not locked.

Quoting specific directions from the State police, the Police Commissioner said all big shops should set up CCTVs and keep a watch on the parking lots.

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