Sandy police arrest 4 men in credit-card fraud at malls

Four San Francisco men who allegedly tried to buy thousands of dollars worth of merchandise with fraudulent credit cards at shopping malls in Murray and Sandy Friday have been arrested by Sandy police.Police picked up five men outside the South Towne Center shopping mall, 10450 S. State, Friday afternoon, Sandy Police Sgt. Kevin Thacker said.

The men were carrying 31 fraudulent cards and seven drivers' licenses with a variety of names, Thacker said. Police also recovered thousands of dollars in property - including a new computer and several cordless telephones - and about $2,000 in cash, all believed to have been acquired using fraudulent cards.

A fraudulent card is one that is basically "homemade" and not backed up by credit card accounts, Thacker said. The cards recovered were manufactured to look like Visa and MasterCard cards, he said.

"And these were good ones," he said.

Four of the five, Raymond S. Xie, 21, Carlton Dao, 20, Guo Hong Huang, 35, and Park Lup Li, 28, were booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of possession of stolen property, use of a counterfeit credit card and possession of a counterfeit credit card.

A fifth person was not arrested due to a lack of evidence, Thacker said.

Police are now trying to piece together the suspects' trail of shopping excursions and are uncertain how long the men have been in the Salt Lake area or how much merchandise they may have purchased with the cards. Police are also trying to match the suspects to a report of fraudulent purchases made at Provo area shopping centers, Thacker said.

On Friday, Sandy officers began looking for the men after Murray police alerted law enforcement that some men had tried to use fraudulent cards at stores in Fashion Place Mall.

An alert clerk at a store in Sandy contacted police when two men tried to use the cards to purchase two watches priced at $1,000 each, Thacker said.

Officers arrested Xie and Li in the parking lot outside the mall as they were walking toward their van. The other suspects were located at the nearby movie theater.