Dinner with theft, for American tourists

After an inquiry which has lasted over a year, the Finance Police in Saronno have identified a group of Indian and Pakistani computer technicians who had designed an ingenious system to clone credit cards. The creators of the criminal project were foreign, but the network of accomplices who made it work was entirely Italian.

“The operation was called ‘Last Supper’; in the late evening, three non-Europeans, two Indians and one Pakistani, would go to two local restaurants with B.F., a broker from Saronno. After the last guests had left, an Indian computer expert, who had been arrested in June, would connect some computer device to the “pos”, which had been made available by the restaurant owners, and with previously cloned credit cards, would make a payment and, in return, received the cash sum of the transaction. The obliging restaurant owners kept 10% of the sum for themselves.

The victims of the organised theft were almost always foreigners, preferably Americans.

The investigations enabled identifying the location of the group’s operating base, a flat in Lissone (near Monza), where the officers found the expensive devices used to clone thousands of credit cards, and to forge numerous identity documents.

So far, it has been confirmed that the illegal business has been worth about €20,000, but this figure is destined to increase, after additional checks have been made, following requests to the foreign companies that manage the cloned credit cards.

Seven people have been charged, one of whom has been arrested, and expensive devices have been seized, in addition to thousands of credit cards, which were ready to be used illegally.