Wire-tapper 'part of big credit-card fraud ring'

BANGKOK: -- A man arrested in Bangkok's Chatuchak district is suspected of belonging to a transnational gang of credit-card thieves, Tourist Police commander Colonel Panya Mamen told a press conference yesterday.

Tossapol Chaowanawuth, 42, was arrested at a rented house in Lat Phrao Soi 41. He was charged with stealing electronic information via telephone lines.

Police said Tossapol confessed to conspiring with at least four accomplices to steal credit-card details - by intercepting data from phone lines at small switchboards before the information reached banks in Phuket.

The gang members then converted the analog numbers into data put on MP3 players, each of which could hold up to 100 credit-card codes.

These were sent to the gang leader in Malaysia, who transferred the data on to forged credit cards, which were sent back to purchase goods in Thailand.

Police said the gang operated for about six months. They allegedly caused financial losses to various banks of about Bt60 million - and possibly up to Bt360 million.

Investigators were probing another Bt300 million worth of transactions suspected to have been done by the gang, Panya said.

The wire-tapping arrest was the first in Thailand and only the third in the world, the Tourist Police chief claimed.

Usually police only manage to find the equipment used for wire-tapping thefts - not the people involved, he said.

The investigation came after Visa International told Thai police they had had many problems with forged credit cards.

Police located and followed the gang to a Phuket house equipped with wire-tapping, which was used as a base for operations, Panya said.

Police plan to expand their inquiries to track down more people involved in such scams.

--The Nation 2006-07-26

- by intercepting data from phone lines at small switchboards before the information reached banks in Phuket.

BS, any data will have been encrypted with @ least a 128bit cypher.. They've simply been listening in on voice calls

You might be right, this sounds pretty sophisticated for regular thieves.

I just saw in theBangkok Post that the information was being relayed to Malaysia where the cards were being made. So, perhaps it is some sophisticated theives.

- by intercepting data from phone lines at small switchboards before the information reached banks in Phuket.

BS, any data will have been encrypted with @ least a 128bit cypher.. They've simply been listening in on voice calls

Not the case. The BS is what the industry wants you to believe, that the data is always encrypted. simply not the case, depends on the location and the sophisrtication of the phone system. also you don,t have the full details yet, this might just be a variation on a recent UKscam where a so called service technician was turning up to service the equipment and installing a data reader that captured and transmitted the data as it was swiped and before any encryption.

And if that wasn't bad enough it was recently revealed that the data from the wireless hand held devices that are bought to your table in bars or restaurants, supposedly to increase your sense of security in not having to part with your card, is never encrypted on its passage back to the terminal and can be picked up on a scanner.