Two Malaysian nationals were arrested for using forged credit cards to pay for hotel bills and luxury items bought at upscale stores in South Korea, police said on Monday.

The suspects are estimated to have charged a total of 8.6 million won ($7,591) on their counterfeit cards.

“Caution is needed when foreign customers do not know the spending limit of their own cards or when their cards don’t get accepted repeatedly,” said Jo Jung-hyuk, a police official in Busan.

The suspects tried to escape Korea after implementing their carefully planned scheme involving credit card numbers used by South Koreans, but got caught when one of the real cardholders received a mobile text notification about a hotel bill of 800,000 won and, suspecting something wrong, called the police.

The two flew to Korea through Gimhae International Airport on Sept. 1, carrying meticulously crafted fake credit cards, and made purchases during the weekend -- a period when the monitoring of credit card transactions is relatively loose.

The police are investigating how they made the fake cards and secured the leaked user data.

By Yoon Ha-youn, Intern reporter
(yhayoun@heraldcorp.com)