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Police including Singapore's Interpol swoop on 80 airports in global ticket fraud crackdown

30 Nov 2014 02:04:29

straitstimes.com

Police have arrested 118 people in an unprecedented globally-coordinated swoop on plane ticket credit card fraud, a billion-dollar organised crime industry, officials said Friday.


Operation Global Airport Action at 80 airports in 45 countries was coordinated from Europol's headquarters in The Hague, Interpol in Singapore and Latin American agency Ameripol in Bogota.


Police teams at airports from London to Manila arrested suspects who had used fraudulent credit card details to buy plane tickets as they queued to board or as they landed at their destination, said Europol chief Rob Wainwright.


"œIt's a billion-dollar a year problem for the airline industry... and the volume of traffic is huge," Wainwright told AFP during the two-day operation on Wednesday and Thursday. "œIn addition, millions of innocent citizens are affected through the misuse of their credit card data," he added. "œWe had to design a global operation to put us into any kind of position to stop the guys from boarding the flights or indeed to apprehend them on arrival."


Read full story: straitstimes.com

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