Overview
- Investigators from the Fiscalía Especializada en Ciberdelincuencia and the PNP say they identified and arrested key members of an organized network that rewrote stored-value Metro cards and ran informal validators called “salderos.”
- Police executed searches that seized 1,280 adulterated cards, a laptop, multiple card readers, software named MCT and FK, and about S/5,000 in cash as evidence of electronic manipulation and resale.
- Prosecutors estimate the scheme diverted roughly S/10 million a year by using cards that showed fictitious balances (reports cite S/300–S/900 on cards whose system limit is S/100) so salderos could repeatedly validate passenger entries.
- Testimony in the probe alleges weekly payments to four agents of the PNP’s División de Seguridad Ferroviaria—reported amounts include S/870, S/1,270 and S/1,570—with some handovers said to have occurred inside station elevators.
- Authorities say informal validation still occurs at some Línea 1 access points because long queues at official recharge points and other operational gaps let salderos keep offering to validate entry for S/2–S/2.50, raising questions about enforcement and oversight going forward.