Courtesy: Greeley Pulitzer | News Source: thethaiger.com

Police have arrested a man for using stolen credit card information for an online shopping spree, with a final bill of over 500,000 baht. 35 year old Jirat Siriwattanakul used to work at hotels in Chiang Mai and Phetchaburi Provinces before getting into online shopping, with other people’s money.

Jirat is charged with impersonation and using another person’s bank card without consent. A victim filed a complaint after the suspect used his card data for an online shopping spree. Police traced the purchases to Jirat and he was arrested 5 days later.

Jirat previously worked as head of reception at hotels Chiang Mai and Petchaburi. The work allowed him access to customers’ personal data and to all the hotels in the system, to confirm payments and bookings.

Jirat could access the data even when he wasn’t at the hotel. Information included customers’ full names, ID number, passport number, birthday, credit card and phone numbers, email address and more, depending on the information used to book and pay.

Jirat would choose a card and call the issuing bank, pretending to be the cardholder. He could answer all security questions because he had the information. He would then change the credit card’s contact number so when he made an online purchase the notification would go to his phone instead of the cardholder’s.

He bought eight iPhones, gold bars, and other items worth about 500,000 baht. At the time of the arrest, officers searched his room and found the ID card of the victim who filed the report, a phone with many customers’ personal information and a collection of data from more than 50 credit cards.