Sharjah: Sharjah Police and the Federal Criminal Police caught an international gang of five who specialised in stealing bank account and credit card information, Sharjah Police announced on Monday.
The gang, which has members inside and outside the country, got hold of the bank details through people working with them in the hotel, gold and retail industries in the UAE.
They have used the information to drain money from these accounts.
The General Department of Federal Criminal Police had received intelligence that an international gang was scheming to steal money from bank customers in a number of European countries, whose banking data had been stolen by the gang’s affiliates in the UAE, specifically in Sharjah.
The federal police passed on the information to Sharjah Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), who formed a team to investigate the matter.
Through search and investigation, the team was able to get information indicating that some people were looking for people who work in hotels, large retail stores and gold to participate in shady deals.
The team was able to identify the five men, who are from various nationalities.
Police learnt that they contacted a hotel manager and asked him to help issue bills for large amounts of money for European people as if they were tourists who stayed at the hotel.
They then asked him to withdraw the said amounts from these people’s bank accounts using the stolen information they would provide him with.
Police said the suspects told the hotel manager that he would get 40 per cent of whatever amount he withdrew.
Sharjah Police worked with the hotel manager to set a trap.
Colonel Ebrahim Musabah Al Ajel, director of Sharjah Criminal Investigation Department, explained that they found out that the men approached multiple managers to help them carry out their plan, but they failed “thanks to the awareness and vigilance of the managers and owners of these establishments, and the cooperation between them and the police”.
The manager pretended to agree to the deal and the men were caught red-handed when they came to the meeting with a laptop and a list containing bank details of their victims, and after they explained the process to the manager.
The suspects confessed that they were going to steal the money from European bank accounts and implicate people from the UAE — as they were going to do with this hotel manager.
The suspects have been transferred to the Sharjah Public Prosecution.
