Security guards foil ATM robbery

HCM CITY — A foreigner who used fake cards to withdraw cash from a Dong A Bank ATM was caught by security guards in HCM City on Sunday, the bank's deputy general director Nguyen Quoc Toan said.

A Romanian, named only as Ciprian, was caught using forged credit and ATM cards with Dong A and 10 other banks' names to withdraw over VND300 million (US$14,400) from an ATM at the junction of Tran Cao Van and Hai Ba Trung streets in District 3 at midnight.

He was handed over to the police. But an accomplice escaped.At the ATM police also found counterfeiting equipment carried by the men.

In another card fraud case, two Malaysian nationals were arrested in Da Nang on Saturday for using fake credit cards to buy diamonds at a jeweller's in the Indochina Riverside Building on Bach Dang Street.

Ling Seng Koey, 24, and Chong Kon Hoi, 47, were seized by the security guards after staff found that the credit cards the two had used to pay VND54 million ($2,580) were forged.

Another Malaysian who had accompanied them fled with the diamonds, but was arrested early the next morning. Police identified him as 30-year-old Wong Kar Wei and found on him a number of diamond necklaces, 18 credit cards, and several passports issued by ASEAN member countries.

The suspects, who entered Viet Nam on July 27, had cheated many other Da Nang shopping malls and supermarkets like Big C and Phi Long to the tune of nearly VND60 million, the city police told a press conference on Monday afternoon. —VNS