John Culatto
FOUR men who used stolen credit cards to buy over £10,000 of luxury items in Gibraltar could soon be extradited to Switzerland for similar crimes.
Mohamed Abdulkadir Musse, Ali Mohamed Abdirahman, Hassan Siklawi and Touwana Mohamed were all in the Magistrate’s Court this morning after serving time on the Rock.
The men, all UK nationals, first came to Gibraltar in March 2020 and bought valuables from shops in Main Street.
They used stolen credit card details that allow the credit card numbers to be entered by hand into POS machines.
This meant they could type out the credit card number and CVV security number without having the card in their possession, reports indicate.
“This type of fraud it is often not discovered until the owner of the credit card sees the transaction on their statement sometime after the event,” said the RGP Economic Crime Unit.
“It makes apprehension of these types of organised crime groups very difficult.”
Not content with their haul, the men returned to the Rock in July 2020 and continued their spending spree.
This time, however, shop staff notified the RGP who were quickly on the scene to corner the thieves.
In total, they had bought around £10,000 of luxury items.
Delayed leave
The four Brits were kept in jail until their Supreme court appearance on October 30 where they pleaded guilty.
Musse and Abdirahman were sentenced to six months in prison.
Siklawi and Mohamed got 15 weeks jail-time each.
The RGP was then contacted by the Swiss authorities that said the defendants were wanted for allegedly buying £114,000 of goods
After being released from Windmill Hill Prison the defendants were arrested under the Extradition Act.
The defendants appeared at the Magistrates Court first thing this morning to respond to the international arrest warrant.
The case was adjourned until November 10 with the four men remaining in prison until the new hearing.
“We continues our commitment to work in partnership with foreign law enforcement Agencies to tackle cross border crime,” concluded the RGP.
“Together we are dismantling organised crime groups who use international frontiers to try and stay out of reach of the law.”
