Japanese arrested in Philippines over fake credit card scheme

Philippine police have arrested a Japanese man and two Filipinos for alleged involvement in a scheme to steal money from banks using fake credit cards in the central province of Cebu, the police said Wednesday.

Police arrested the three Tuesday and seized gadgets allegedly used to duplicate other people's credit cards after a bank complained of unusual transactions that were traced to the Japanese.

About 1.13 million pesos ($20,106) were taken out from one of three banks that filed complaint with the police, police officials said.

Charges of violation of the law regulating the issuance and use of credit cards are being readied against Yuichi Sagino, 38, and the two Filipinos who may have served as Sagino's contacts in Cebu. Sagino's passport shows he is from Nagano Prefecture, the police said.

Police said they are looking for accomplices who actually operated the scheme along with Sagino.

Sagino and his group presented the fake credit cards to the banks to draw cash advances against the credit accounts, police said. They pretended to be the credit account holders of these cards and presented fake documents like passports and driver's licenses to the banks.

"This is why we are trying to verify whether Sagino gave us a legitimate passport, because that passport may be fake as well," said Superintendent Leodegario Acebedo, the chief of the Mabolo village police station that carried out the arrest.

Sagino's visa in the Philippines expired in mid-2004 and he may have gone to Cebu from the main island of Luzon specifically to perform the scheme, Acebedo said. Receipts and other records reveal he has been in Cebu since Jan. 13, he said.

Confiscated from one of the three rooms in the Cebu hotel that Sagino rented were a laptop computer that contained other people's credit card information, machines for embossing names and numbers on cards, a card processor and other devices, along with 98 cards that appeared unused and 280,000 pesos in cash.

The charge against Sagino carries a penalty of six to 12 years of imprisonment.

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