Police step on Rochdale Fraud rates

Date published: 17/03/2005

On Thursday 17 March 2005, five men had been arrested at addresses in the Rochdale area following dawn raids carried out by officers from Greater Manchester Police's Cheque and Card Fraud Unit and from the Rochdale Division.

The five men will now be questioned at police stations throughout the force. In October of last year GMP were contacted by the Royal Bank of Scotland who were dealing with a large number of credit and debit transactions where the card numbers had not been issued by the bank.

Officers from the Economic Crime Section commenced an operation codenamed Kavala which established that these credit and debit card offences were being carried out by an organised group who were mainly based in the Rochdale area.

Following further investigations it became clear that this group were using the cards to fraudulently purchase goods from a number of retailers including Tesco Stores.  Staff at the stores assisted the police by providing CCTV and original electronic fund transfer vouchers.

It is thought that this particular group travelled throughout the UK fraudulently purchasing items such as cigarettes, alcohol, mobile telephones and mobile top up vouchers.

To date in excess of 12,000 transactions have been made obtaining goods to the value of £500,000. Detective Chief Inspector Mark POWELL, from the Economic Crime Section said, "The arrests made this morning follow five months of intelligence and
evidence gathering by our officers who have worked extremely hard on Operation Kavala.

"GMP will not tolerate this type of crime and I hope today's raids act as a deterrent to others who are maybe thinking of trying credit or debit card fraud."

Chief Inspector John Martin from Rochdale also said, " Today's operation is one of several that have been undertaken to ensure that Rochdale is a safer place to live and work."

Those arrested are as follows;

• A 31-year-old man from Bamford
• A 20-year-old from Sudden
• An18-year-old from Deeplish
• A 21-year-old and a 20-year-old from Rochdale