An accountant who ran a multi-million pound credit card fraud scam from an office park in Finglas in North Dublin has been jailed for four years. Thirty-six-year-old Mohammed Salem, with an address in Ballymun, led a highly organised crime syndicate which stole millions of euro worth of goods using stolen credit card numbers and counterfeit credit cards which he had made himself.
Fraud Bureau detectives estimate that the fraud cost at least €4m. He is the first person to be convicted of this crime in the State.
Mr Salem used the headquarters of Liberian Limited as a front for importing skimming and counterfeiting equipment. A nondescript office in a North Dublin business park became a production factory for counterfeit credit cards and a centre for distributing goods stolen on those cards. The cards were also sold to criminal gangs across Europe.
Mr Salem used sophisticated machinery, such as skimming machines, computers, reader writers, foil tipp machines and card making embossers, irons and scalpels to produce counterfeit credit cards. He used the numbers of cards stolen from customers in places such as Dublin city centre restaurants.
The gang was able to use the numbers to buy goods on the phone and on the Internet. In one three-day period, a card number stolen in Dublin was used to buy over €1m-worth of goods in Taiwan.
Detectives from the Bureau of Fraud Investigation found 400 stolen, blank and counterfeit credit cards when they raided his office. Mr Salem has been a target of Irish fraud investigators for five years. He has had nine previous convictions and operated under 18 different names, serving sentences in Britain and Holland.
