A Woolworths check-out girl skimmed hundreds of cr
A Woolworths check-out girl skimmed hundreds of credit cards in a pnds stlg 650,000 con, a court heard.
Angela Neocleous, 24, emailed customers’ details to
Claudia Mert, 28, whose home had been turned into a credit card cloning factory.
Mert then paid the proceeds of the fraud into a bank account and she was able to run a top-of-the-range Mercedes.
She was caught with the details from 850 stolen cards when police shut down the factory after just five months.
But detectives believe the losses ‘could have been enormous’ had the gang remained unchecked.
Southwark Crown Court heard how police raided the factory in north London on July 10 last year.
Mark Fenhalls, prosecuting, said: ‘They found a sophisticated and well developed credit card factory.
‘There was computer equipment used to manufacture cards.
‘Police found many hundreds of card numbers that had been compromised.
‘Losses were in excess of pnds stlg 650,000, but that takes no account of the large amount of numbers that had not been used.
‘Mert lived in that house and accepts she provided safe haven for the factory.
She was also responsible for paying proceeds into an Abbey National bank account.
‘Benefits to her lifestyle were that she lived in a house and drove a Mercedes.
‘
Mert helped run the factory with her husband Murat but he fled the country after he was released on bail leaving his wife ‘high and dry’.
Soon after Mert was released on bail she was arrested againe when she was caught stealing peoples’ credit cards at cash points.
Police then followed a paper trail from the factory, in Pretoria Road, Edmonton, north London to the Woolworths branch in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire.
After an internal investigation by managers Neocleous’ name was given to police.
She was arrested at her home in Brookmans Park, Herts on September 24, a month after the factory had been shut down.
After searching her room officers recovered the skimmer which held the details from 28 stolen cards ready to be sent on to a credit cloning factory.
Neocleous was thought to have cloned 150 cards as shoppers paid for goods at her counter between April and September last year.
A second man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for two and half years last month for his part in the scam.
Jailing Mert for 18 months and Neocleous for nine months Judge Christopher Hardy said: ‘This was a highly professional and dishonest organisation where in excess of pnds stlg 650,000 was defrauded.
‘Neocleous, you played a vital part in this fraudulent enterprise.
‘The skimmer you used is as dangerous a weapon to credit card fraud in this country as a firearm is to crimes of violence.
‘You claim you were placed under pressure, people put under similar pressure should think twice before they cave in.
‘Mert, you provided knowingly a safe haven for this activity and your hand writing was found among the compromised documents.
‘
Mert, of Pretoria Road, Edmonton, was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to one charge of conspiracy to defraud.
Neocleous, of Georges Wood Road, Brookmans Park, was jailed for nine months after pleading guilty to one charge of conspiracy to defraud.
Speaking outside court DC Dave Cass said: ‘This was a highly sophisticated operation cloning a large number of credit cards.
‘Closing it down has saved the banks and industry hundreds of thousands of pounds.
‘Had the factory been allowed to continue the potential losses could have been enormous.
‘
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