KUALA LUMPUR: Police busted a syndicate which had been active in cloning credit cards when they arrested three men in Cheras and Bukit Bintang here yesterday.
The success also saw 109 ready-to-use cloned credit cards seized, alongside a set of card-manufacturing equipment.
City police chief Datuk Tajudin Md Isa said the success followed police intensive investigation into a credit card fraud case involving a five-star hotel in the city.
He said police received a report from the hotel's management on Monday, that they were cheated of over RM5,000 by a tenant who used a credit card, believed to be fake, to pay his bills.
"Following the report, a team of policemen from the Dang Wangi police headquarters Commercial Crime Investigation Department launched a probe before raiding an apartment unit in Batu 9, Cheras yesterday.
"There, the team arrested two of the suspects and seized the cards and equipment.
"Police believe that the apartment was used as a 'lab' to produce counterfeited credit cards," he told reporters during a press conference at the Dang Wangi police headquarters here earlier today.
Besides the cloned cards, police also seized 2,625 white plastic cards, which had yet to be turned into counterfeited credit cards.
Following the arrest, police nabbed another suspect at a handphone shop in Bukit Bintang. All of the suspects are Malaysian men aged between 26 and 33.
Tajudin said one of the suspects was the one who used a cloned credit card at the hotel.
Police initial investigations found that the syndicate had been operating since the past two years.