Tamil man arrested in Sri Lanka for providing false information to Channel 4

Fri, Jul 8, 2011, 08:26 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.



July 08, Kandy: Sri Lanka police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) today produced a person arrested under suspicion for providing false information to Britain's Channel 4 before Kandy Additional Magistrate Tikiri Jayatilleke.
The magistrate ordered the suspect to be detained for 90 days for further investigations.
The suspect Kandavanam Jegatheeswaran, an ethnic Tamil, who has arrived from UK, was arrested on June 30 under information provided by a Muslim businessman, police sources said.
A special police team made the arrest, sources said.

http://www.colombopage.com/archive_11A/Jul08_1310136972CH.php

Swiss Tamil arrested in SL

Chinnaiah Maniwaran, who was arrested after coming to Sri Lanka to investigate on Tiger business connections and operations after the destruction of the Tiger power was arrested by Sri Lankan authorities after his arrival. He was allowed to be questioned by the CID by the Mt. Lavinia chief magistrate. He has come from Switzerland to attend a wedding of one of his cousins and was arrested later in Mt. Lavinia. During investigations he has revealed that he came to Sri Lanka to check on LTTE financial network after the disruption of Tiger activities.


http://srilankawatch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=886&Itemid=2

Two charged with smuggling 31 illegal immigrants to Palm Beach County

By ALEXIA CAMPBELL

Sun Sentinel

Federal agents have arrested a Miami man and woman on human smuggling charges for trying to bring 31 illegal immigrants to South Florida on a 40-foot fishing boat this week, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Jesus Saavedra-Reyes, 52, and Sandra Anderson, 50, were intercepted in their boat east of Boynton Beach on Monday by U.S. Coast Guard crews, according to a federal complaint.

With them on Le Superior were 19 illegal immigrants from Haiti, six from Brazil, four from Jamaica and two from Sri Lanka.

Coast Guard crews returned the Haitians to Haiti and the rest were interviewed and processed for deportation in West Palm Beach and Miami. Seven of them had been deported before, according to ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents.

The immigrants interviewed identified Saavedra-Reyes as the boat captain and Anderson as the boat owner. They told agents they expected to stay at Anderson's Miami home until they each paid the $5,000 smuggling fee.

Both Saavedra-Reyes and Anderson denied being involved in a human smuggling ring, the complaint said.

Saavedra-Reyes and Anderson were arrested Tuesday night and appeared Wednesday in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach. A federal judge ordered them held in pre-trial detention.

Both face a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison, $250,000 in fines and three years of supervised release.

The number of illegal immigrants intercepted at sea en route to the United States has decreased in the past three years, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Statistics show 2,088 people were intercepted in fiscal year 2010, compared with 4,802 in fiscal year 2008.

As recently as August, 22 immigrants, mostly from Haiti, made it to shore in Boca Raton and Manalapan. Boca Raton police and Border Patrol officials detained 16 people, including three children, near the South Inlet Park.

A second group of six people, apparently including at least one Sri Lankan national, was detained in Manalapan. All were processed for deportation.

One of the more dramatic human smuggling cases also was off the Palm Beach County coast. In May 2009, a boat carrying about 30 Haitian immigrants capsized off Boynton Beach, killing 10 people, including a pregnant woman.

The two boat captains - Jean Monique Nelson, 32, and Jimmy Metellus, 33 - were charged with alien smuggling resulting in death and were each sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison.

According to the federal complaint, the two had met up in Haiti and agreed to captain a boat from the Bahamas to the United States with Haitian immigrants, who paid up to $4,000 for passage.

After some engine trouble, the boat capsized about 18 miles off Boynton Beach. There, the Haitians stayed in the water for 11 hours until a good Samaritan saw them.

Among the dead brought ashore was an 18-month-old child. Prosecutors also counted a pregnant woman's fetus among the dead, saying it was viable outside the womb.

Alexia Campbell can be reached at apcampbell@SunSentinel.com or 561-243-6609

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/two-charged-with-smuggling-31-illegal-immigrants-to-972973.html?cxtype=rss_1531308

TAMIL LANKAN JAILED AFTER 517 CARDS CLONED IN CHIP-AND-PIN FRAUD

Sri Lankan jailed after 517 cards cloned in Wallasey petrol station chip-and-pin fraud

Read More http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2011/07/09/sri-lankan-jailed-after-517-cards-cloned-in-wallasey-petrol-station-chip-and-pin-fraud-100252-29022178/#ixzz1RhfzSEQE

Read More http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2011/07/09/sri-lankan-jailed-after-517-cards-cloned-in-wallasey-petrol-station-chip-and-pin-fraud-100252-29022178/#ixzz1RhgLXbtZ

AN ILLEGAL immigrant was today behind bars after ripping off hundreds of customers at the Merseyside petrol station where he worked.

Sri Lankan Murugaiya Selvakumaran, 36, swapped the chip and pin machines at a Murco petrol station in Wallasey with card readers which allowed international criminals to copy customers’ cards and make fraudulent withdrawals.

The fraud only came to light towards the end of February 2009 when banks began to tell their clients they were victims of £41,500 of illegal transactions.

In total, 517 credit and debit cards were compromised.

The petrol station, in Leasowe Road, is run by a Sri Lankan family but they were not related to Selvakumaran, who gave them a fake name when he moved to Wirral from Middlesex.

Jo Maxwell, prosecuting, told Warrington crown court yesterday: “Some 200 customers of the Murco store contacted Merseyside police to let them know that a fraud had taken place.

“Their investigations, and extensive CCTV, showed all the transactions had taken place during shifts when Mr Selvakumaran was at work.”

The court heard CCTV showed him swapping the pin machines for the card readers, which were never recovered.

Ms Maxwell added Selvakumaran, who has lived in the UK for nine years, was an illegal immigrant who had exhausted all legal options to stay and had his work visa revoked.

Ken Heckle, defending, said: “He was not the brains of the operation and he has not benefited.

“This money went to other people more criminally sophisticated than himself.”

Selvakumaran, who was assisted at court by a Tamil interpreter, was caught by police in Surrey on an unrelated matter in March.