14 DAY TRIAL // Europol, Italian, and Romanian police have collaborated to arrest a criminal group suspected of installing ATM skimmers across Italy, France, and Romania, and also running a prostitution ring in Switzerland and Italy.
According to Europol, the joint operation resulted in 14 house searches, the temporary detention of 14 individuals, and the arrest of 7 suspects in Italy and Romania.
According to Romania's DIICOT (Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism), officers searched homes in 11 Romanian counties and managed to arrest the group's leader.
Group leader arrested in Romania
DIICOT says the 30-man group was led by Nazare Mihai a.k.a. "Moșu" (Pop), a.k.a. "Tătucu" (Daddy), a man with deep ties in the criminal underground.
Romanian police suspect that Nazare is not only the leader of the ATM skimming group that activated in France, Italy, and Romania, but also the head of a prostitution ring with Romanian girls that was active in Italy and Switzerland.
Authorities said they found and seized incriminatory evidence such as micro camera bars, card readers, magnetic strip readers & writers, computers, phones, flash drives, as well as thousands of plastic cards that the group prepared to encode with payment card data stolen using the ATM skimmers.
Group was active since 2013
DIICOT has evidence to suggest the group is active since 2013. Europol says the organization caused damages of hundreds of thousands of euros, primarily through its ATM skimming operations and the fraudulent extraction of funds from the affected accounts.
DIICOT says the group employed the stolen payment card data to create fake cards, which members used to withdraw money from ATMs or buy expensive clothes and shoes from Italian stores. According to Europol, most of the fraudulent transactions took place in the Milan and Monza areas.
Romanian authorities have indicted the group on several charges, such as forgery of electronic payment instruments; the circulation of forged electronic payment instruments; possession of equipment, including hardware and software, in order to serve the falsification of electronic payment instruments; illegal access to a computer system; money laundering and managing a prostitution ring.
