Writings - Northville credit card case traced to international crime syndicate

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February 23, 1993

TRAVERSE CITY — Fake credit cards confiscated at Northville Downs last month appear to have been the work of an international fraud ring now under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service.

The ring, the subject of a Secret Service probe titled "Operation Plastic Dragon," involves the manufacture of counterfeit cards with false identifications and stretches from Northville and Novi to the Far East by way of Windsor and Toronto.

Secret Service agents in Detroit theorize that the eight fake Chase Manhattan Bank cards seized at Northville Downs Jan. 9 were manufactured in Hong Kong and then sent to Toronto with no numbers on them. The account numbers used on the cards apparently were lifted from patrons of a Chinese restaurant in Windsor, and then embossed on the blank cards in Toronto. 

The numbers actually belonged to accounts with the Bank of Montreal, 1st Card Chicago, Chemical Bank, Comerica Bank, Credit Union One and others.

John Moore, assistant special agent in charge of Secret Service operations In Michigan, said the case has far-reaching implications.

"It's a big problem," Moore said Monday. "We're talking, possibly, hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud."

Law enforcement agencies involved in the ongoing investigation with the U.S. Secret Service include the Royal Hong Kong Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Customs Service "and many local law enforcement agencies like the Northville police," Moore said.

Detroit's U.S. Secret Service office became involved after Northville City police arrested a Hong Kong citizen at Northville Downs the night of Jan. 9.

Ming Wai Leung, 22, tried to use one of the counterfeit cards as identification to cast a $400 check, when an alert racetrack teller realized that the number on the card was wrong. The teller had learned during an earlier, unrelated fraud case that all Chase Manhattan accounts began with the number "54," but Leung's card started with the number "51."

City police took Leung into custody, and a subsequent search of his belongings revealed the other cards and a forged driver's license.

Leung told police he had come into the United States from Windsor, and said he had shopped at Twelve Oaks Mall before ending up at Northville Downs.

Moore praised the quick action by city police officers that resulted In Leung's arrest.

"They did really a wonderful job," he said. "They got their officers right there, they held onto this guy, held onto the evidence, they didn't let him walk or tell them some story and get away. ... They've got a real strong case based on their good work."

The strength of the city's case may be why Leung pleaded guilty to one count of possessing a fraudulent financial transaction device in Wayne County Recorder s Court Feb. 19. He is scheduled for sentencing March 2 in front of Recorder's Judge Michael F. Sapala.

Leung also faces federal charges of credit card fraud at U.S. Courthouse in Detroit for the other cards found in his possession. That case is still under way.

Moore said Detroit is not the only metropolitan area in which the fake plastic has been spotted or used. "We're working this in various cities where we've made arrests," he said. "Our Miami office has a case that they're working that just happened in the last two weeks, where they actually were able to get some of the counterfeit cards."

Other locations where the cards have turned up include Alaska Los Angeles and the Bahamas.

The cards themselves seem to be the product of a sophisticated criminal network, Moore said.

"Basically, they're a group of organized crime people out of Hong Kong and Macao, China, who are involved in manufacturing these credit cards and false identification to go with it on a worldwide basis," he said.

"For the most part, the people that are doing this here are Chinese nationals that are either here as visitors or on student visas," he added. "Typically what's happening is that the subjects are Asian males, sometimes accompanied by females, 20 to 28 years of age. They're usually well dressed, they have to be able to speak some English and they re buying big dollar items like Rolex and Gucci watches, (or) very expensive jewelry.

"The one thing that they're not able to do, because these are actual account numbers, is go to an actual ATM machine because they don't have the PIN (Personal Identification Number). If they could, they'd really be reaping a harvest."

The Leung case also illustrates a more sophisticated method of forging a card, according to Moore.

"In the past we saw stolen cards that people would re-emboss with legitimate account numbers."

In contrast, the cards in Leung's possession were manufactured from scratch and had the stolen account numbers embossed on their front and encoded in the magnetic strip on their back. "That makes them able to use them at an electronic sales terminal too, where they just run the card through, as long as it's a good account number," Moore noted.

Still, Moore said, the Hong Kong cards do have some distinctive features.

"If you look at the hologram on the cards and compare it to a genuine hologram, it's just kind of stuck on there," he said. "On Visa cards, the Visa logo has got some microscopic printing around the border. These cards either lack that or it just looks like a bunch of little lines. A couple of these cards, they also printed the backs on upside down."

A fake credit card has a short life span, but thieves can run up a huge bill in that span, Moore said.

"They'd probably use a card maybe a few days or a week and then get rid of it, and not use it again, because once the legitimate account holder gets their first bill the card would be canceled out."

Secret Service agents say about $70,000 was charged to one of the false cards in Leung's possession in a single day.