Fake credit cards net criminals $13,000 a day

NEW YORK - A crime ring raked in about US$10,000 ($13,500) a day by making credit cards with numbers bought illegally from overseas websites, committing mortgage fraud and staging car accidents and car thefts to collect insurance payouts, prosecutors said yesterday.

Thirteen people were indicted on 261 counts including enterprise corruption, identity theft, real estate and credit card fraud and conspiracy to commit car insurance fraud.

Between 2004 and last year, the ring bought credit card numbers from Russian and Ukrainian websites, made fake credit cards at sites throughout Brooklyn referred to as "labs", and then gave the cards to hired "shoppers" to buy goods, which were later sold or used to furnish homes that had been purchased illegally, prosecutors said.

Merchandise was installed in homes, which would be reappraised at higher values and the mortgages refinanced, prosecutors said. Another facet of the scheme involved faking sales of the homes.

In a separate scheme, the group is accused of filing false claims on luxury cars by staging wrecks and accidents, and by replacing undamaged interior parts with damaged ones, and then reporting to police that the cars had been vandalised, prosecutors said.

The defendants were scheduled to be arraigned in county court yesterday in three separate indictments.

- AP