Five men have been arrested in an operation conducted by the banking industry and the Hawks in the past two days, it was announced on Friday.<\/p>\n
The men, aged between 32 and 47, were believed to have operated in Daveyton and the surrounding areas.<\/p>\n
“Yesterday afternoon [Thursday], the first four suspects were smoked out of their hideout, a house in Secunda street, which belongs to one of the suspects,” said Hawks’ spokesman Paul Ramaloko.<\/p>\n
Another man was arrested in Mauna street on Friday morning. “When the arresting team arrived at Secunda street, they found a laptop containing financial data on the table in a lounge. The data had been retrieved from potential victims’ cards, to be encoded into the cloned cards,” Ramaloko said.<\/p>\n
A card writer, card reader, skimming devices and 13 cloned cards were seized at the Mauna street property.<\/p>\n
“People are warned to be careful not to ask for assistance from strangers when using their cards, since this exposes them to defrauders,” said Ramaloko.<\/p>\n
It was not known how many people fell victim to the syndicate.<\/p>\n
The five men would appear in the Pretoria Specialised Crime Court on Monday on charges of fraud and contravening the Electronic Communication and Transaction Act.<\/p>\n
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