Crime | Credit card data theft scares several residents

A Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson said yesterday during a press conference that several residents had been reportedly targeted in a fraud that included the unlawful theft of credit card information and attempted misuse of such data to acquire goods or services from a particular website.

On August 25, three residents notified the PJ of an attempted unlawful use of their credit cards. The three residents received messages from their banking institutions, notifying them of 36 attempts to use their cards to pay for various goods or services on the one website.

Although the police said that none of the residents suffered any damage because they immediately reported the unlawful transactions, the PJ fears that more cases of the same kind will occur and warns residents to pay close attention to their transaction history.

The 36 attempts to unlawfully use stolen credit card information to purchase goods and services involved over USD2,500 (Over MOP20,000) in value.

At the moment, the PJ has not found any links that could explain how the three credit card details were unlawfully obtained, as none of them had been reported lost and their owners had been using them regularly without any problems.

In a separate case, the PJ also issued a warning regarding people who might be pretending to be police authorities investigating a “fallen object from a building” to enter citizens’ houses.
The PJ warns that such “modus operandi” is not used by the authorities and urges citizens to verify the identity of anyone who requests permission to enter their homes.

So far, the police are said not to have received any reports of loss or damage regarding these types of cases.