LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cyber Crime wing has arrested two more men for credit card fraud, FIA sources told Daily Times on Wednesday.

One of them, Adnan Nazar, worked in a bank of good repute, and allegedly gave out classified information of credit card holders (security code, parental verification, and issuing and expiry dates) from the bank’s database to cyber offenders. Adnan belongs to Toba Tek Singh and was living in a rented house in Gulberg. He was identified to be involved in the case after FIA’s investigations following the arrest of a cyber crime gang several weeks ago. He was arrested five days ago and sent to Camp Jail in judicial lockup.

Abid Taj, the second, was caught from Hassnainabad near Cavalry Bridge two weeks ago. Shahid and Rizwan, who had been arrested already, had transferred more than Rs 300,000 to his United Bank account. Cyber Crime Circle Deputy Director Muhammad Ajmal told Daily Times that the department received three or four complaints every month, of which one or two were found authentic.

“Our officers recruited by the Public Service Commission are being given modern training in Islamabad on cyber crime. We have some computer experts in our team and will wipe the practice out soon,” he said. He said that when the unit was set up, the lower cadre staff was slightly confused about how to deal with anonymous criminals who could only be traced by using technology. “It was a slow process in the beginning,” he said, “but now we’re arresting offenders quite regularly.”

Shahid Iqbal, Asim Anwar, Asad Asif and Rizwan Ahmad were arrested for credit card fraud on May 15, and Rana Ashraf ,Zahid Hafeez ,Imran Sarfraz and Atif Majeed were arrested for stealing their colleague’s credit card information. Asad Asif has been released on bail and Asim Anwar has forfeited the Rs 100,000 he had earned by the fraud, sources said. Banks have taken several precautionary measures, and although it doesn’t take more than 10 minutes to get a card blocked, the bank is not responsible if the transaction has been made before that.

KARACHI: Khurram Iftikhar was an unproductive college drop-out in Karachi, Pakistan. With a loan from his father, he started a business selling used refrigerators, air conditioners, VCRs, and TVs, which he sold in the United Arab Emirates. Most of his products were shipped through Singapore. The business eventually failed, but not before Iftikhar learned a lot about shipping routes and freight forwarding operations in Asia, Europe, and America. He already knew about online auction sites. He also knew he could easily steal credit card numbers from auction transactions. And he couldn’t resist the temptation. Soon Iftikhar was auctioning non-existent equipment, stealing credit card numbers of buyers, and using them to order more equipment online. Naturally, he never sent the buyers any of the items they had paid for. That’s what put U.S. Postal Inspectors on Iftikhar’s tail.

Based on information received from the Postal Inspection Service and provided to U.S. Customs, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Karachi had intercepted and seized two shipments of 15 allegedly stolen Gateway laptop computers that had been sent from Dubai to Karachi. FIA agents detained the two men who arrived to pick up the items. Both shipments were under consignment to Fast Track, a computer company in Karachi owned by Khurram Iftikhar, and had been ordered from Topoli Electronics in Dubai. The Federal Investigation Agency conducted searches at four sites related to Khurram Iftikhar: his Fast Track store, his home, and two storage warehouses he used. The agents seized 200 computerrelated items, plus more than 100 Hewlett Packard printers from one of the warehouses.

FIA agents arrested four men, including Khurram Iftikhar. They were kept in custody for six months without bail an almost unheard of punishment in that country. The four now await prosecution.

KARACHI, June 24: The FIA Commercial Banking Circle on Monday arrested three suspects for their alleged involvement in a credit card fraud case and recovered security data of over 50 such cards.

According to the FIA, the investigation began on an information from the Askari Bank that a gang was actively defrauding credit card holders. The Deputy Director FIA CBC-II, Mohammad Mustafa Kamal, assigned a team to investigate the matter.

The FIA team arrested Saram Hussain while receiving credit card of the bank from a subscriber in the presence of the bank’s security staff. Shahzada Faisal and Naseer Ahmed were also arrested from Gulistan-i-Jauhar following recovery of data of over 50 credit cards along with security checks, preserved in the bank only, etc. All of the three suspects were produced in a banking court and remanded to FIA custody for further investigation till July 3.

FIA officials claimed that they were making efforts to arrest the other members of the gang.

LAHORE, May 15: The FIA’s Cyber Crime Unit arrested nine people allegedly involved in credit card fraud worth millions of rupees on Monday. The arrested accused were Rana Muhammad Ashraf, Zahid Hafeez, Imran Sarfraz, Haseebur Rehman, Atif Majid, Shahid Iqbal, Rizwan Ahmed, Asad Asif and Asim Anwar.

FIA Director Mohammad Manzoor and Crime Circle Deputy Director Ajmal Khan told the media that Rana Ashraf utilised three counterfeit visa cards of different African banks to make purchases worth Rs3.8 million in Lahore and Gujranwala. The agency recovered two cards and Rs600,000 cash from his possession, the officers said.

Zahid and Imran fraudulently obtained the cards of three employees of a textile unit in Faisalabad and used Rs400,000, they said and added that half of the amount had been recovered from the accused.

Similarly, Haseebur Rehman and Atif Majid obtained five visa cards and used Rs2.5 million from the balance. The agency officials recovered Rs1 million from them.

The remaining accused obtained cards of different banks in Lahore on the fake ID cards and utilised the complete balance. Some 18 cards were recovered from them.

Director General FIA informed that the Investigative agency has been using trained manpower in combating criminals involved in hacking of Internet sites, ransom, kidnapping and money laundering. He called for promulgation of a law on cyber security. Project Director, Natrional Response Centre for Cyber Crimes said, so far the centre has helped in nabbing 25 individuals involved in cyber crimes. He said a series of seminars and workshops in various parts of the country on the subject have greatly helped in arousing awareness among people about the imperatives of cyber security.