Village of the scammed: Garage worker emptied hundreds of bank accounts by cloning neighbours' cards

Abdul Samad Mohamed Raik cloned more than 500 debit or credit cards to steal £175,000 in a global fraud allegedly driven by links to a guerilla group in Sri Lanka.

Barely a single household in Houghton on the Hill, Leicestershire, escaped the scam, which was carried out over a two-month period late last year.

Residents in the village, which has a population of around 1,500, had no idea that they had been targeted until learning from their banks that their accounts had been plundered all around the globe.

Unwitting victim: Jim Funnell at his filling station till where the credit card details were copied

Leicester Crown Court heard yesterday how Raik, a Sri Lankan national, used a fake card reader to copy the card details of both villagers and motorists passing through the area.

Fake cards were then used to withdraw cash from the customers accounts in countries all around the world including Australia, Senegal, India, Canada and the Philippines.

Although some attempts to withdraw money were refused, other victims of the scam lost cash which was withdrawn on the same day at locations hundreds of miles apart.

Justin Wigoder, prosecuting, said the owner of Houghton Garage, Jim Funnell, had no idea what was going on while Raik was at the till.

Raik, 33, worked at the village's Jet filling station and its shop for 13 months and carried out the fraud between October and December last year.  

Scene of the crime: The friendly garage where villagers were scammed

He left his job at the end of 2007 when the scale of the scam became clear to locals.

He gave himself up to police in March. He claimed he became involved after running up a debt with a loan shark who was linked to the Sri Lankan guerilla group the Tamil Tigers.

Raik told police he was given the cloning equipment and ordered to use it to pay off what he owed  -  and more besides.

The organisers also provided him with a fake Indian passport and told him he could use it to flee the country afterwards, he claimed.

Yesterday Raik was jailed for two years and nine months after admitting obtaining property by deception and possessing a false passport.

Sentencing him, Recorder Duncan Smith said Raik was guilty of a 'gross breach of trust' towards Mr Funnell, who 'relies on the good faith of his staff and on the custom his customers bring him'.

The court heard villagers have rallied round the garage and its owner since the offences came to light.

Mr Funnell, 51, said at the time: 'We think the information must have been emailed all around and then sold on, because the cards have been used in all sorts of countries.

'There's hardly a household that hasn't been affected.'

Residents admitted they were amazed by the extent of the cloning, which led to them calling Houghton the 'village of the scammed'.

Ray Smith, 63, a managing director, said: 'I found out that about £600 had been withdrawn on my debit card in Canada.

'The crooks were very persistent. They tried three times in one minute and were blocked, but then I was hit again a day later and lost the £600.'

Raik, who was living in Rushey Mead, Leicester, first applied for entry into the UK as a student in 1999 and was allowed to stay until 2006.

He then applied to remain as the spouse of a Latvian national, but the application was withdrawn.

His immigration status is now under review.

Judge Smith added: 'Your involvement in this fraud was brought to an end by yourself after a relatively short period of time.

'Even though you had the wherewithal to spirit yourself away, you handed yourself in to the police. You made a clean breast of what you had done.'