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Fish store owner among merchants in credit card rip-off

Suman Guha Mozumder in New York

Eight South Asian merchants from Jackson Heights area of Queens, New York, including one who ran a fish store, were arrested and charged with ripping off credit card companies for over $ 5 million.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said on Friday that the merchants colluded with other credit card holders to run up maximum allowable charges on the cards on fake purchases and then divided the money among themselves.

"Card holders and merchants are alleged to have split the proceeds of the fraudulent transactions and thereafter they allegedly 'busted out' their accounts by failing to make the payments forcing the credit card companies to close the accounts and place them in collection," authorities said.

Among the credit card companies that fell victim to the fraud were American Express, Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, Discover and First USA.

"The defendants are accused of devising and carrying out a scheme to plunder millions of dollars from America's credit card-based economy, but investigators quickly uncovered a paper trail which led to their discovery," Brown said.

Those who were nabbed after an eight-month investigation were identified by authorities as Salam Bhuiyan, Naim Chowdhury, Anwar Haque, Samsul Haque, Abulfazal Islam, Kaium Shah, Mohammed Uddin and Sardar Uddin.

Officials said most of the defendants were from Bangladesh and had their businesses located in Jackson Heights, an area with a large concentration of immigrants from Bangladesh.

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