Supermarket Credit Card Scam Yields Gang Jailed

Not too long ago in the media there was talk about a supermarket credit card scam in which the gang used a very sophisticated system to take a great deal of money from consumers in the UK while they were shopping for groceries. The gang even those in Gloucester have been caught and jailed. You will find that gang was part of a group that worked in Sainsbury’s supermarkets and other stores for the last four years. In fact the scam created vast amounts of money for the gang in which they used on booze and cigarettes. One of the gang members managed to gain £41,000 in less than two months. The Nectar Loyalty card points that this member racked up were used on other items. All of the information regarding the gang and specifically this member was revealed in the Southwark Crown Court yesterday during the trial.

You will find that the gang would take the stolen goods back to their London headquarters and then sell them locally in the middle of the night. In other words they didn’t have licenses to sell the booze and cigarettes so they made a tiny profit off of those who didn’t care. They would also use the local licenses in other places to sell the booze and cigarettes.

Some of the gang member’s identities have been released and these following members all admitted to the crimes. Christy Balasingham age 28, Uthyayara Sithisrathasan age 35, Kumarasritharan Mukundan age 28, Raja Ramsamy age 32, and Kumuran Theivendran age 29 are some of the members who have already plead guilty. Two other known to be involved Ramsamy and Thomas Jegandass also admitted to their involvement in a Dorset scam that was implemented last year.

The evidence against them is great and police found that the gang used seventy five different cards that they cloned in order to buy goods in the stores in several different areas. In fact Bournemouth, Cambridge, Cirencester, Weybridge, Gloucester, Leeds, Southampton, and Kent were all places the fraudulent cards were used. The cards were used for small priced purchases so as not to raise any alarms with the police.

It was found that the gang members would go in to the stores in twos or threes and purchase the items they wanted. In fact the amount would be just below the limit on the cards that the bank would allow.

The police finally tracked the group back to their head quarters on Crundale Avenue in Kingsbury, north west London. In the head quarters they found several banking documents as well as accouting books. The accounting books contained enough information regarding all of the transactions that they made fraudulently.

In fact Balasingham was made apart of the scam in order to keep the accounts straight for the gang. There were over 362 bank accounts found on the information in the head quarters. The involved gang members were from Sri Lanka originally, but were also made UK citizens over the years. The courts have decided on two and half to three and a half years for the gang members depending on their involvement.