Police suspect the three men may be part of a much larger ring operating in popular tourist areas throughout Thailand and other parts of the world.

Lt-Colonel Boonlert Onklang of Kathu Police Station identified the three suspects as Pathmathas Ganeshamoorthy, 26, Srikanthan Veerasingam, 29, and Sivagnanam Gnanakanthan, 35. The passports of all three men revealed that they had been frequent visitors to Thailand.

Boonlert said police had arrested Ganeshamoorthy and Veerasingam at the northern end of Thaweewong Road in Patong early on Tuesday evening after a closed-circuit TV camera caught the pair using a fake credit card to draw money from an ATM in front of the Kon Thai Pub in Karon.

At the time of the arrest, one of the men was sitting in a silver-coloured Honda car, the other was on the beach.

A search of the vehicle uncovered a notebook computer, 2,703 fake white credit cards and three flash drives. After the arresting officers turned down a Bt2-million bribe in exchange for their release, the men were questioned, Boonlert said.

The two men told police the cards and equipment belonged to Gnanakanthan, who had arrived in Phuket earlier that day, Boonlert said.

The men had picked up Gnanakanthan at the airport and dropped him off at his hotel, the Pen Villas in Surin, he added.

A visit to Gnanakanthan's room just after midnight early on Wednesday uncovered an additional 2,533 fake credit cards. Of these, 483 were green and the remainder white. Unlike the cards seized earlier that day, all the cards were marked with a four-digit number.

Police also seized an MSR206 card magnetic-strip reader and encoder.

All three men were arrested and are now being held at Kathu Police Station. They were taken to Phuket Provincial Court on Thursday afternoon, and each was charged with one count of electronic-card forgery and one count of possessing a fraudulent electronic card with intent to use.

All three men denied the charges. Bank officers plan to inspect the cards and determine how many of them have been used. It is still too early to estimate the cost of the men's activities to Phuket businesses, Boonlert said.

Police believe the Sri Lankans may have been operating as part of a larger fraud ring, he added.

The cards seized in Phuket were similar to cards seized in earlier raids in Bangkok and Chon Buri. Those cards were encoded with data from genuine credit cards issued in the UK, Boonlert said.

Phuket Gazette

KATHU