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Indo-Canadian con jailed in Australia
An Indo-Canadian man has been jailed for eight years for his role in a $4 million card skimming scam that affected about 4500 West Australians.
Navaneeth Ponnambalam, 29, was sentenced in Perth's District Court after he was found guilty by a jury last month on 220 counts of stealing.
His charges relate to more than $400,000 stolen from 220 McDonald's customers between October and December in 2009, who were victims of compromised PIN pads installed at McDonald's restaurants around Perth.
The entire card skimming operation at the fast food restaurants netted almost $4 million.
Ponnambalam had left for Australia after he was arrested and charged with credit card fraud outside of Ottawa in February 2007
In Australia, last week, Judge Bruce Goetze said Ponnambalam flew from Sydney, where he was living at the time, to Perth three times to prepare and install the customised PIN pads on Eftpos machines in the drive-through sections of the food outlets.
The bank details of future Eftpos users were then scanned, and transferred onto blank bank cards that were used at various ATMs around the world to withdraw money.
"The idea was to make the withdrawals, as many as possible, quickly, before the banks ascertained the skimming took place," Judge Goetze said.
Judge Goetze said the operation involved a "highly sophisticated degree of criminality".
He said card skimming was attractive for criminals because of a "combination of low risk and high returns", and Ponnambalam's sentence must reflect the need for general deterrence.
Judge Goetze added the scam inconvenienced the customers, who could not withdraw any money from their accounts after being targeted.
"It has to be said that just about everyone of us these days works on the basis of having a credit card," he said.
Ponnambalam had a "technical role" in the operation that enabled the cash withdrawals to take place.
The court heard Ponnambalam was born in Sri Lanka but was a resident of Canada, where he had spent three months in jail for fraud and was on bail for alleged credit card fraud when he left the country for Australia in 2009.
Ponnambalam will be eligible for parole after he has served six years in prison.
His sentence was backdated to when he was taken into custody in December 2009.
He was also ordered to pay compensation of more than $400,000.
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