Published on - 2/1/2008
A ROUTINE TRAFFIC stop in Toronto has sparked a widening police probe of a debit-card fraud that may have funnelled funds to the LTTE from Canada.
After a visiting motorist failed to halt at a stop sign Monday, police in Scarborough's 42 Division searched his rented vehicle and found plastic cards carrying the debit data of bank customers in the United Kingdom.
Now four men face multiple charges of attempting to loot bank accounts in Britain.
The four - two of them visitors from Britain and two of them Toronto residents - are all of Sri Lankan origin.
For now, the alleged scam is being treated as a relatively straightforward effort to steal tens of thousands of dollars from British bank-card holders via the international network of bank-teller machines.
But lead investigator Detective Scott Whittemore said yesterday that in visits to two Scarborough homes, police discovered calendars and posters promoting and lauding the LTTE, a group outlawed in Canada.
Providing it with material support has been illegal since April of last year, when Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day announced that the Tigers had been added to Ottawa's list of proscribed terrorist groups.
The United States and the European Union have similarly blacklisted the organisation.
Police are investigating whether any of the four men has financial ties to the Tigers.
If the alleged fraud was intended to benefit the Tigers, it would not be the first time crime-derived funds have been funnelled to the group, but such connections are always hard to prove, Det. Whittemore said.
The four men were arrested when their rented car ran a stop sign and was examined. Police discovered 42 plastic bank cards in the car, and dozens more cards were found when police later raided a Brampton hotel and a home on Scarborough's Ellesmere Road.
And while it was unclear how much money was actually stolen, $25,000 in Canadian $20 bills was found in the raids, along with two laptop computers, computer memory sticks and hardware, pinhole cameras and passports and travel documents.The four men will appear in court tomorrow for a bail hearing.
