With Malaysia's reputation as a hotspot for credit card fraud, police are o­n alert to protect the purses of some 10,000 delegates to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit here next week.

It is feared that credit card cloning syndicates plan to make a killing at the 114-nation summit to be attended by 58 heads of government and senior officials with high credit levels, Federal Commercial Crime director Maizan Shaari said today.

"Since most of the delegates are high-ranking officials, their credit card limits are high, as much as RM40,000 or more - the o­nes most sought after by the cloners," he told AFP .

"We will step up vigilance and checks to prevent forgery. It is important to gain confidence and to give a good impression that we are able to enforce our laws.

"It will be embarrassing for us, if a month after the summit, the delegates find out that their credit cards have been used o­n a shopping spree by the syndicate."

Lack of adequate laws

Maizan said police would check credit card terminals at hotels occupied by delegates as well as nearby shopping centres to ensure there were no skimming devices or encoders.

He said such high-tech devices were able to capture card data stored in the magnetic strips in just about two seconds, with each device able to store the data of 100 cards.

Bankers said Malaysia has the worst card fraud record in the region, although no statistics were available.

Easy access to technologies and equipment for making counterfeit cards, coupled with the lack of adequate legislation, were the main drivers for fraud, they said.

Earlier this month, a Malaysian airline steward was arrested at Japan's Narita international airport for smuggling 3,000 credit cards with no magnetic strips.

Japan's police also detained a Malaysian student waiting at a hotel near the airport to pick up the smuggled cards. The two were believed to be part of a wider smuggling network. AFP