Haul of 90,000 fake credit cards leads to indictments

A US federal grand jury has indicted three people after investigators seized 92,000 counterfeit credit and debit cards.

The seizure of 80,000 counterfeit cards and several credit card skimmers in California followed the interception of 12,000 fakes imported from China. Blank cards featuring logos of major banks were allegedly embossed with details taken from real cards captured by point of sale machines.

"Credit card fraud scams like this result in major losses for the affected financial institutions and it's ultimately consumers who pay the price," Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for HSI Los Angeles, said.

Investigators moved quickly after finding 12,000 cards in four shipments from China two weeks ago. The discovery led to the execution of a search warrant on a storage unit in Los Angeles, where a further 80,000 cards were found.

US officials are still assessing the scale of the operation, but are conservatively estimating the value of the fake cards at $45m, based on a $500 minimum credit limit per card.