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
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.