-reputedly ‘the biggest’ such ring in US history
A QUEENS-BASED identity theft ring — described as the biggest in US history, with ties as far afield as Africa — has been busted, authorities said Friday.
The 111 suspects, including Guyanese, are members of five organised forged credit card and identity theft rings based in Queens County, and have ties to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The 16-month investigation, dubbed ‘Operation Swiper’, began in October 2009, and the defendants perpetrated fraud that cost financial institutions and retail businesses more than US$13M in losses over a 16-month period, according to the 10 indictments.
The indictments charge that Imran Khan, Ali Khweiss, Anthony Martin, Sanjay Deowsarran,  and Amar Singh, all Guyanese, were the ‘bosses’ of criminal enterprises, and in receipt of the necessary raw materials — lists of credit card account numbers and various blank credit cards.
Among others charged are Ravindra Singh, Amar Singh, Ravi Ramroop, and Kamal Sanasi (all Guyanese), and Neha Punjabi Singh and Vishnu Harilal.
Eighty-six of the defendants are in custody, while 25 are still at large and presently being sought.
The defendants, posing as bank tellers, store employees and restaurant staff ripped off more than $13M by allegedly skimming customers’ personal IDs and forging their credit cards. The loot was then spent on shopping sprees nationwide, five-star hotels and private jets.
The fraudsters rented luxury automobiles such as Lamborghinis and Porsches and private jets with forged credit cards that contained the account information of unsuspecting American and European consumers.
“These weren’t hold-ups at gunpoint, but the impact on victims was the same,” Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly said. “They were robbed.” The suspects stole credit card account numbers and forged credit cards.
‘Shoppers’ were then given those cards and sent on shopping sprees in New York, Florida, Massachusetts and Los Angeles to buy high-end electronic items such as Apple gadgetry,  fancy handbags by Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Rolexe and Breitling, as well as expensive jewellery.
Among the other crimes listed in the indictments are a $95,000 cargo theft from JFK Airport and an $850,000 theft of computer equipment from the Citicorp building in Long Island City. Such goods were often later sold over the Internet.
According to Queens District Attorney, Richard Brown, the cost of the theft is incalculable.
“This is by far the largest – and certainly among the most sophisticated – identity theft/credit card fraud cases that law enforcement has come across.”
Credit card fraud and identity theft, he said, are two of the fastest growing crimes in the US, afflicting millions of victims, and costing billions of dollars in losses to consumers, businesses and financial institutions.
“Even after the culprits are caught and prosecuted, their victims are still faced with the difficult task of having to repair their credit ratings and financial reputations,” Brown said, adding: “In some cases, that process can take years.”
The investigation involved intelligence gathering and electronic eavesdropping on dozens of different telephones in which thousands of conversations in Russian, Mandarin and Arabic were intercepted.
Brown said as part of the investigation, search warrants were executed earlier in the week at 15 locations throughout New York City and Long Island.
Among items allegedly recovered were approximately US$ 650,000 in cash, seven handguns, computers, card readers, embossers, blank credit cards and fake identifications.
Authorities say the graft operated like this: At least three bank workers, retail employees and restaurant workers would steal credit card numbers in a process known as skimming, in which workers take information from a card when it is swiped for payment and illegally sell the credit card numbers.
Different members of the criminal enterprise would steal card information online. The numbers were then given to teams of manufacturers, who would forge Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express credit cards. Realistic identifications were then made with the stolen data. The plastic would be given to teams of criminal ‘shoppers’ for spending sprees at higher-end stores, including Apple, Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. The groups would then resell the merchandise overseas to locations in China, Europe and the Middle East.
Detectives with language skills spent hours translating Russian, Farsi and Arabic during the investigation, Kelly said.
Part of the problem, especially for foreign tourists in the U.S., said Deputy Inspector Gregory Antonsen of the NYPD’s organized theft and identity theft task force is that, unlike their overseas counterparts, credit card companies in the U.S. do not install special microchips that make skimming more difficult.  What they do, he said, is work with police to help fight theft.
“The credit card companies do a good job at keeping their customers happy,” he said, adding:  “So if you’re a victim of a loss … you will get your money back. They also work very diligently in partnership with us providing us information that we need to investigate these cases.”
As Kelly observed, criminals are becoming more and more sophisticated. “Thieves have an amazing knowledge of how to use technology,” he said. “The schemes and the imagination that is developing these days are really mind-boggling.”
Authorities also say the ring operated lower-rent schemes. In one instance, they tried to heist  what they believed to be expensive electronics from a hangar at the John F. Kennedy Airport, like something out of the movie ‘Goodfellas’.
They were, however, stopped by police in the nick of time, and as it turned out, the loot was not what they expected, but construction tools; apparently, they had filched the wrong package by mistake, Antonsen said.   (ABC NEWS/NY Daily Mail)