3 credit card ‘cloners’ nabbed in QC

Three men allegedly involved in cloning credit cards have been arrested in Quezon City by agents of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).

Director Samuel Pagdilao Jr., CIDG chief, said Gringo Omar Labayani, Norman Taebas and Gerald Acopio were arrested during an entrapment operation inside a fastfood restaurant on Quezon Avenue at 11 p.m. on Sunday.

“While we call on the public to be extra cautious in their credit card transactions to avoid being duped by criminal groups, we also applaud the proactive stance of citizens in helping the police stop these unscrupulous people,” Pagdilao said in a statement.

He added that before the operation, a police informant called up the CIDG to inform agents that a certain Prince and his group had given him a skimming device to copy the information from credit cards.

The information is then forwarded to the gang which uses it to make fake credit cards.

According to the tipster, the syndicate paid him P1,000 per card.

Pagdilao said that over the weekend, the suspects called up the informant to ask him if he had more credit card information to give them.

“Unknown to them, that person had contacted the CIDG. (They) were caught while giving money to another person as payment for the stolen credit card information,” he added.

Seized from the suspects were a laptop computer, a skimming device, an adapter cord, two computer keyboards and the money used to pay the police informant.