‘Nosy’ Ballito resident busts card cloning syndicate

A tip-off led to the arrest of two men suspected of operating a card-cloning operation in Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal.

Vice-chairman of the Ballito neighbourhood watch and community policing forum (CPF), Morne Steffens, said a resident called them who suspected criminal activity at a local guesthouse.

IPSS Electronic Security operations director, Brennon Knott, said a plan was formed with the police to ambush the suspects.

“When their vehicle left the guesthouse the next morning, 10 July, it was pulled over on Ballito Drive,” he said.

The alleged criminals being pulled over in Ballito Drive last week. Image: IPSS Electronic Security

The suspects were arrested after a large number of cloned bank cards, identification documents and cellphones were found and seized.

“The men were identified as a syndicate which has been cloning credit cards for some time and proved to be quite a catch,” he said.

Steffens said the arrests highlighted how important it was for the community to report suspicious activity. He thanked the alert residents, IPSS Electronic Security and Umhlali South African Police Service (SAPS) for their actions.

Banking industry crime stats

The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) released its annual crime stats for 2019 on behalf of the banking industry which revealed that credit card and debit card fraud increased by 20.5% between 2018 and 2019.

Sabric CEO Nischal Mewalall said in a statement: “The increase in credit card fraud must be viewed against the growth of the credit card payment ecosystem which has seen a rise in the number of credit card transactions processed by banks, coupled with increases in the number of cardholders and merchants. This would have contributed to more incidents.”

66.6% of all fraud on South Africa issued credit cards took place on merchant devices in a foreign country while the counterfeiting of cards decreased by 44.8% for credit cards and by 34.8% for debit cards.

This article first appeared on North Coast Courier and was republished with permission.

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