The country's biggest fake credit card racket has been uncovered in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, involving 41,000 fraudulent cards and a base full of state-of-the-art production materials.

Guangdong police yesterday announced, in collaboration with their counterparts in Hong Kong and Macao, that the fake credit cards were confiscated from a Shenzhen warehouse and production site in February.

Four suspects, including a Hong Kong resident surnamed Lau, were detained at the two sites, according to Xu Wenhai, director of the Economic Criminal Investigation Department under Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security.

Lau, 31, is thought to be the leader of the group, Xu said.

Addressing a press conference in Guangzhou yesterday afternoon, Xu said computers, code readers, printers, fax machines, scanners and raw materials for card production were also found.

"It is so far the largest fake credit card case that has been uncovered in the Chinese mainland and also one of one of the biggest cases involving fake credit card production and sales in the world," Xu said.

The seized fakes mainly included imitations of Mastercard, Visa and others issued by big name international banks.

The technologies and equipment used to produce the fake credit cards were found to be most advanced in the world, Xu said.

Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security last May established a special task force and began investigating when they received information from Hong Kong police that a fake credit card gang might have started producing fake cards in Shenzhen.

The gang allegedly stole credit card information from abroad and focused on producing and selling fake credit cards in the southern Chinese region.

Zhang estimated that if the fake credit cards had been circulated they would have caused economic losses valued at more than 900 million yuan (US$112.5 million).

The crackdown of the case has dealt a heavy blow to the region's fake credit card production gangs and will likely deter related crimes, Xu said.

Despite the achievement, Xu said Guangdong police would continue to spare no effort to crack down on illegal economic financial incidents in the region and try to bring fake credit card production under control, Xu said.

"Guangdong police will continue to expand their co-operation with Hong Kong and Macao counterparts in fighting cross border crimes in the future," Xu said.

The Hong Kong Credit Card Risk Management Committee also sent a delegation to the Guangdong provincial capital city to express their appreciation to Guangdong police.

Brian Chan, president of the Hong Kong Credit Card Risk Management Committee, said the uncovering of the case would help protect the legal interest of foreign banks and overseas cardholders.

Banks in Hong Kong are estimated to have issued more than 10 million credit cards.

(China Daily 04/12/2006 page9)

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