Court jails couple for credit card fraud

Manama : The Lower Criminal Court has sentenced a British man and a Turkish woman to three years behind bars for Credit card fraud, while it cleared two others citing lack of evidence. One of the freed suspects where a Yemeni national and the other was a man holding a GCC passport.
The suspects landed in police net as they tried to buy luxury cars worth BD700,000 using fake credit cards from a car dealer here.
“We accepted his offer and drafted a purchase contract, but informed the authorities,” the dealer told investigators.
One of the suspects, a British national, according to court documents, told the car dealer that he would leave Bahrain and would complete the transaction when he arrives back”.
“When he came back, he insisted to complete the purchase offline,” the dealer said adding: “This triggered our suspicions.” “Thus we contacted the General Directorate of Anti-Corruption and Economic and Electronic Security.”
Investigators, who were aware of a counterfeiting gang operating in the kingdom, jumped into action and managed to arrest the suspects from the showroom. The arrest also led to trapping two others, who were released by the court.
The General Directorate of Anti-Corruption and Economic and Electronic Security said that they were investigating incidents involving embezzling money from ATMs via forging bank card authorisation numbers.