Man nabbed in north Cyprus for stealing the information of the ATM card of foreigners and stealing over 3M TL from them

A Turkish Cypriot business man was arrested and detained last week after he was found to have fraudulently copied the information on the bank accounts of foreigners and stole over 3 million Turkish Lira in the process.

The suspect named only as İ.K was parade in a court in Lefkosa on Friday on charges of "Acting Against the Prevention of Money Laundering Law", "Forgery in Credit Cards Using Information Systems", "Forged Official Documents", "Theft" and "Fraud Funding"

The suspect is said to be the owner of a business operating in Cihangir.

Police said he fraudulently deposited a total of 3 million 617 thousand TL into his company account the period of July, 23-30 by copying the information of the bank cards of foreigners living abroad and using them with the mail order system.

Police in a statement said that on August 10, 2023, they received information from a bank operating in the TRNC that many transactions were made with the mail order management of a workplace's POS device without their consent from credit cards of some individuals and that the amount of 3,617.166 TL was transferred to the account of the workplace in question leading to an investigation. .

The suspect was identified and arrested by the financial police.

The police, who recorded that the suspect was searched at the workplace, the invoice block belonging to the company, the pos device with which he made the transactions and the laptop with mail order forms, 2 mobile phones with passport and card information of many foreign persons, many slips showing the card draws and the transactions he made in the safe.

40,000 TL cash money was found and taken as evidence.

Police investigation into the matter revealed that the suspect tried to defraud the victims using their card information, which is believed to have been stolen or copied, between 23-30 July 2023 at the workplace, and with the intention of defrauding the card information, mail order system was used many times without the knowledge and consent of the card holders in the pos device at the workplace. He explained that by using his company, he made a total of 3,617,166 TL of money falsely deposited into his company account.

In the investigation, police said that they found that some of the money transferred to the workplace account of the suspect was withdrawn in cash, and some of it was transferred to another account belonging to the same company.

Police said 101 transactions were made.

The police said that the suspect, upon the complaint of credit and debit card holders, issued 8 fake invoices stating that he had made an unrealistic sale to the card holders, and submitted the invoices to the bank.

On the other hand, the police stated that, in the examination carried out in the invoice block seized at the workplace, 12 invoices believed to have been cut and put into use and 14 invoices believed to be prepared to be used were identified, and an investigation was launched in this direction as well.

The police demanded that the suspect be detained for 3 days, stating that the suspect gave a voluntary statement with the content of confession, that there were statements and indications to be taken, and that two persons believed to be related to the issue were being sought.