BBC News | EUROPE | French court jails credit whistle-blower

BBC News Online: World: Europe

Friday, 25 February, 2000, 14:46 GMT

French court jails credit whistle-blower

A French court has given a computer engineer a ten-month suspended prison sentence after he demonstrated how security systems for credit cards could be broken.

The man, Serge Humpich, found a way of forging a bank credit card that would allow him to withdraw the equivalent of two-thousand dollars every fifteen minutes.

But when he took his discovery to the organisation that oversees security for millions of French credit cards with the idea of selling his secret, he was turned away.

He later went with a legal officer and bought tickets from a machine in the Paris metro to show that his forged card worked.

But he was then arrested and charged.

Mr Humpich says he doesn't understand the court's verdict and he has plans to appeal.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

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