ATM thieves employ

Two foreigners have been arrested in Shanghai for using cloned credit cards to steal more than 500,000 yuan ($82,600) from automatic teller machines (ATM) around the country, local media reported Thursday.

Police arrested the suspects, who were only identified as natives of South Asia, in December following an investigation into suspicious bank cards that were turning up in ATMs around the city, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News.

Several local banks began reporting the appearance of the mysterious cards earlier in the month. The cards bore no pictures or logos. They were blank except for a single magnetic strip on one side. The banks suspected that the cards were designed to mimic legitimate credit cards, the report said. Police later determined that the cards contained the stolen information of actual cardholders, which the suspects used to illegally withdraw cash from ATMs.

Police began investigating the case after one of the suspects was spotted trying to withdraw cash from an ATM downtown with a suspicious card, the report said. After checking the surveillance camera footage at several ATMs, police discovered that the same man was making the withdrawals.

A China Construction Bank employee later spotted the suspect inserting a blank card into one of the bank's ATM machines on Weihai Road in Jing'an district. The bank employee called the police, who arrived and found the suspect was carrying 18 blank ATM cards and 5,000 yuan in cash.

Police found the suspect had a partner holed up at a hotel in Putuo district. They went to the hotel and arrested the second suspect just as he was about to leave. They confiscated 414 cards, more than 500,000 yuan in cash and the equipment that the suspects used to make the cloned credit cards.

Some of the cards had been swallowed by the ATMs because they were cloned from accounts that did not permit cash withdrawals.

The two men entered China on November 25 from Shanghai Pudong International Airport. They first went to Guangdong province, where they traveled to several cities, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Foshan.

On December 10, they returned to Shanghai. Police found that they had used more than 90 cloned cards to withdraw about $25,700 from ATMs in the city.

The two suspects obtained the stolen credit card information from overseas.

The case remains under investigation.