£2m card fraud IT man gets nine years

An IT worker who admitted downloading the details of credit cards used by passengers to buy tickets for London's Heathrow Express rail link has been jailed today for nine years.

Sunil Mahtani, 26, from Watford had pleaded guilty to copying the card details over a three and a half year period when he worked for a company that processed credit card transactions for BAA's airport rail service.

Almost 9,000 card details were downloaded by Mahtani, who passed the information on to accomplices who used it for making cloned credit cards that were then used to buy large quantities of cigarettes and tobacco across Europe. These were then sold back in the UK for a large profit.

£2m was stolen by the gang but detectives, who labelled it the biggest card fraud investigation in the UK, said it could have totalled almost £20m if the gang had cloned more than just 847 of the card details downloaded by Mahtani.

Mahtani claimed he got involved with the gang after becoming frustrated by the financial gap between himself and his high-earning merchant banker girlfriend.

Mahtani's accomplices Shahajan Miah and Shaidal Rahim who also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud were jailed for four years each.