UK and US police smash $200m credit card fraud ring

Eleven people in the US, the UK and Vietnam have been arrested and accused of running a $200m (€153m) worldwide credit card fraud ring, US and UK law enforcement officials said last night.

“One of the world’s major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies,” Andy Archibald, interim deputy director of the National Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement on the British government’s Serious Organised Crime Agency website.

The arrests were coordinated by the three countries, the statement said.

Officers arrested three men in London — a 37-year-old from West Ham, a 34-year-old from Thornton Heath and a 44-year-old from Manor Park.

In the US, charges have been brought by the US Department of Justice against Duy Hai Truong, aged 23, of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, a suspected ring leader there.

In a statement, prosecutors said that authorities in Vietnam had arrested Duy Hai Truong on May 29 in an effort to break up a ring that he is being accused of running with co-conspirators, who were not named.

Prosecutors claim that Truong and his accomplices stole information related to more than a million credit cards and resold it to criminal customers through the websites www.matteuter.biz and www.mattfeuter.com, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey.

Although Truong has been charged in the United States, he does not have a US-based lawyer because he is being held in Vietnam, said Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for the US Attorney in New Jersey.

— Reuters