( dpa )- Two Britons were on Tuesday starting a 40-month jail sentence in Hong Kong for a scam which involved using data stolen from 287 British bank accounts to withdraw 380,000 Hong Kong dollars (48,600 US) in cash.
Tourists Nazir Zaheer Abbas and Raza Adhnan , both aged 23, used telephone top-up cards encoded with the stolen account details to withdraw the cash over three days last April.
They appeared in court Monday for sentencing after earlier being convicted of conspiracy to steal and possessing false instruments.
The court heard the two men began using the cards after arriving in Hong Kong on visitor's visa in April 2007.
They were arrested after police received a report of two men acting suspiciously by an automatic teller machine (ATM). Twenty telephone cards and 26,330 Hong Kong dollars in cash were seized from the two men.
A search at their hotel room found another 248 telephone cards and 354,000 dollars in cash.
An investigation by the Commercial Crime Bureau showed the magnetic strips on the cards were encoded with the data of 287 accounts from 20 United Kingdom banks, from which a total of 382,200 dollars had been withdrawn in Hong Kong.
Sentencing the men, Judge Esther Toh said the fraud was highly sophisticated and very serious.