Cash card skimming gang caught

A gang of illegal immigrants are today facing jail after being caught in the shadow of St Paul's with hi-tech "card skimming" equipment capable of stealing tens of thousands of pounds.

Four men and two women - all from Romania - had already siphoned off more than £8,200 using the scam. When police raided their flat, they found 108 forged bank cards and PIN numbers giving them potential access to another £130,000.

The gang fitted micro scanners and pin-hole cameras to hole in the wall machines in a swindle which marks a new level of sophistication in credit and debit card fraud.

They are due to be sentenced in a landmark ruling at Southwark Crown Court today after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud, the first time in Britain a card scanning case involving the use of pin-hole cameras has come to court.

Police say the case proves hitech criminals are at work in London.

Counterfeit card fraud cost £148 million last year and that figure is due to rise. On average each victim loses £1,400.

The gang's operation involved attaching card skimming devices to the doors of indoor cash machine lobbies to record data from unsuspecting customers' cards.

Pin-hole cameras - which can be bought on the high street - fitted above or near the machines can record customers entering their pin numbers and transmit the images to gang members.

At the gang's base, a house in Silvertown, east London, police found a laptop where card details were stored before being used to make clones.

Any card with a magnetic strip can be used, including mobile phone top-up and store reward cards, and matched with the pin number so it can be used at cash machines.

The arrests took place on 10 July this year when City of London Police searched 20-yearold Ina Ivan and a 17-year-old suspect. The pair had followed a customer into the HSBC bank at St Paul's churchyard.

The pair were found with a card reading device and tape for attaching it to the ordinary card swipe need to gain entry into the machine lobby.

Plastic tubes with pin hole cameras and transmitters were found on Vassilica Ivan, 21, and a second 17-year-old nearby.

When the first 17-year-old signalled to the driver of a vehicle down the street, Vasile Sandu, 21, police searched it and found video equipment and a monitor in the passenger seat where Mioara Daniciulescu, 18, another female gang member, was sitting.

Officers had been working on intelligence that criminals were beginning to target banks with new devices for gaining card details and Pin numbers.

Nothing is known about the gang other than they entered the country illegally. The only documents found in their house were a fake Italian driving licence and ID card.

The six remained silent during questioning by detectives and refused to disclose any details about whether they were part of a wider operation.

Police suspect people smuggling gangs have forced illegal immigrants to pay off their passage by getting them to do carry out illegal activities such as card skimming.

Detective Constable Lee Bowen, who led the investigation, said it was relatively simple for the gang to set themselves up.

"We have been working closely with the banks on initiatives to frustrate this type of attack and have had particular success in designing out this type of crime with the assistance of HSBC."

While card cloning has been around for some years, the criminals are displaying a new level of sophistication.

Though many banks including HSBC have taken action to stop their lobby doors being used by criminals, as the Evening Standard recently reported, both City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police have discovered gangs using devices that fit round card slots to obtain data.