14 DAY TRIAL // The Romanian authorities are undergoing a massive effort to dismantle cybercriminal groups operating in the country. During the last ten days, two series of arrests and raids related to credit-card fraud were performed in major Romanian cities.
On September 9, the Romanian Direction for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) announced that criminal charges were brought against 22 people for forming an organized crime group specialized in access-device fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. The gang was based in the Timis county, western Romania, but some of its members also operated abroad.
The fraudsters are said to have rigged Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals in stores across Italy and the UK with rogue microchips that were intercepting transaction data and credit card PIN numbers. The captured information was then being sent back to Romania, where their accomplices used it to create fake copies of the cards and withdraw money from ATMs. Local authorities raided multiple locations in several Romanian counties and seized card-cloning and computer equipment.
More recently, an even larger crackdown operation was instrumented by DIICOT against three cybercriminal groups based in Craiova. On the morning of September 17, police task forces simultaneously descended at 29 locations in the aforementioned city, as well as in the cities Constanta and Bucharest, and arrested 17 individuals suspected of engaging in credit card fraud-related activities.
Jean Marin Mihaila, aka Jan, Nicolae Drivan Florin, aka Fulgerica, Ionel Calin, aka Nixon, Iustin Covei, the son of a local judge, and Petre Halanei, all from Craiova, are suspected of coordinating the credit card-fraud operations. Similarly as with the previous bust, the fraudsters also operated abroad in countries such as Spain, Australia, Jordan or the Tunisian Republic.
ATM skimming equipment and cloned cards, as well as money, luxury cars, laptop and desktop computers were found and seized during the raids. In a single apartment, in addition to a handgun and a rifle, the police found 124 swords, knives and other cutting weapons.
Since the beginning of 2009, the Romanian law enforcement has made significant efforts to reduce cybercrime. Back in March, we reported that DIICOT dismantled an international phishing gang coordinated from western Romania, while in April, members of a similar group based in the city of Iasi were arrested.