The fraudsters operated a card skimming campaign affecting thousands of card holders in 20 European countries, and netting around €1.5 million every month. The gang would attach disguised card readers to ATM devices able to steal the card details during a transaction. Cloning bank cards in Europe has become more difficult with the advent of EMV chip-&-pin technology, but the gang got round this by using the stolen details in transactions in non-EMV areas, “mainly,” says Europol, “in the Dominican Republic and Peru.”
The Europol operation, codenamed ‘Cloning Connection,’ was run by the Italian State Police and began in December 2010. It was supported by a Bulgarian operation codenamed ‘SHOCK2’. The Italians concentrated on the technical aspects of the operation, including cross-border observations and the interception and analysis of 240,000 phone calls. The Bulgarians concentrated on the international structure of the criminal organization, and located the illegal card skimming factory near Plovdiv.
“Since the start of the operation two years ago, 49 arrests had been made in Italy, bringing the total number of arrests in relation to this operation up to 105,” says Europol. The Europol team involved, which had advisors on the ground in Bulgaria and provided technical support throughout, will become part of the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) due to open on 11 January 2013 at Europol in The Hague.
“The operation shows that Europol and its law enforcement partners are determined to crack down on this serious crime. Again, one of the most significant criminal groups active in this field has been taken out of business due to an excellent example of international police cooperation”, said the Deputy Director of Europol, Michel Quillé. “Payment card fraud is a global challenge,” he added. “Criminals with access to compromised payment card data distribute the data worldwide. In such cases, cross-border cooperation and coordination of international investigations is crucial to effectively tackling this problem”.
Card fraud is a lucrative business, and the EU is the world’s largest market for payment card transactions. It is estimated that organized crime groups derive more than 1.5 billion euros a year from payment card fraud in the EU.