A MAN who was involved in the cloning of credit cards and theft of cash from Citibank auto-teller machines was jailed a total of 12 years on Wednesday.

Essien Emmanuel, 33, a Ghanaian, pleaded guilty last month to 12 charges of conspiracy to commit theft and access the bank's computer system, and also having materials and machine to make false instruments.

His co-conspirator, Charly Nwanne, was described in court as a syndicate member operating in London.

A district court heard that Emmanuel, who had 228 charges considered, used at least 99 fake credit cards with information skimmed from genuine ones to withdraw at least $50,000 from Ctibank ATMs here.

He received at least 780 blank magnetic strip cards specifically designed or adapted to receive data electronically to make fake credit cards.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon Oh, said Emmauel remotely accessed his co-conspirators' details of stolen credit cards in Singapore via e-mail. He used the information to encode the magnetic strips on blank cards to create cloned credit cards.

Acting on a report by Ctibank, officers arrested him and his wife at the basememnt of Paragon shopping centre on June 19.

He had earlier, within four days, illegally withdrew cash from Citibank ATMs using cloned credit or ATM cards containing genuine cardholders data.

From his service apartment at Somerset Road, Commercial Affairs Department officers seized a laptop, a card encoder and more than 780 magnetic strip cards.

His wife was given a stern warning and repatriated.

Emmanuel's lawyer, Ms Gloria James, said his client was a victim of desperation and manipulated by Nwanne who took advantage of his situation.

She said relatives and friends from his church in Ghana had helped him raise $11,726 as restitution.

District Judge Ch'ng Lye Beng backdated his sentence to June 19 last year.