|
Card-cloner Adrian Pleseru jailed for his role in an international skimming scam |
|
Red card for skimming fraud |
|
Phone: ++353 (0)1-884-9000 Fax: ++353 (0)1-884-9001 E-mail: eamon@dilloninvestigates.com
|
|
To contact Eamon Dillon:
|
|
Home ¦ Books ¦ News stories |
|
A key player in a sophisticated credit-card fraud gang was jailed this week for four years. Adrian Pleseru pleaded guilty after being caught red-handed with equipment to clone credit cards during a Garda raid on his Cabra flat. The 28-year-old Romanian dad-of-one was caught last April after a Garda operation was set up to target a highly-organised pickpocket and card skimming scam. Over 100 young pickpockets were flown into Ireland as part of the criminal scam in which bags and wallets were stolen from tourists in city- |
|
centre Dublin. Undercover cops began arresting the teenage thieves at the rate of eight a day as reported pickpocket incidents soared.
There were 70 reported incidents alone in March 2008 in the south city centre. Gardai searched Pleseru’s Dublin flat in April where they found card reading devices including one that allowed details on cards to be changed. In Pleseru’s wallet they found a fake Visa card in his own name but with someone else’s bank details imprinted on the card’s magnetic strip. Also found, hidden under a bed, were digital storage devices, phones, laminate paper and note-books containing numbers and details. The officers found 261 cards of which seven were stolen, 46 were forged cards and 198 were shop and club cards which are used to make forgeries. The bank details came from customers from all over the world including Norway, USA, Germany, Holland and Australia. When being questioned by gardai, Pleseru claimed he just allowed the equipment to be stored there and used the false cards to buy his food, according to evidence from Garda Niall Murray. Although he admitted to having seen the cards being cloned, he refused to give any information on who did it. Pleseru arrived in Ireland in January 2007 from Spain shortly after he got married to woman from his home town in Romania. In a letter to Judge Desmond Hogan, Pleseru said that he left home in Romania at 14 after his grandfather died to get away from his abusive step father. Since then he had lived in Germany and Spain. The relationship with his wife ended following his arrest in Ireland in April 2008 when she moved back to Romania with their nine-year-old child. Pleseru also said that his brother had suffered permanent injuries in a tragic accident in Spain. Judge Hogan however, said he was concerned that Pleseru had already been caught with fake cards before the raid in April 2007. One of those offences took place in Carlow which suggested Pleseru was moving around Ireland committing crimes. He said that he did not accept that the Romanian was “an innocent abroad” and that he was “no mere callow youth”. “He knew what was going on,” he said. Judge Hogan imposed a four-year jail sentence, back dated to 9 April, 2008 and suspended the final 12 months. Pleseru was linked to a global card-skimming operation that has fleeced millions from Irish bank customers. From their base in Brussels the highly-organised gang sent teams of skimmers to steal customers’ card details all over the world. Gardai in Ireland have established the best track record of any EU police force in catching the skimmers with more than 20 prosecuted and jailed in this country. At is peak in 2005 the fraudsters stole a staggering €4 million from unsuspecting Irish victims. Card details are skimmed by secret card readers and mini-cameras installed on cash machines allowed the gang to ‘clone’ the cards. On average the criminals make €3,000 from each cloned card. Belgian prosecutors said last November that the arrested gang, acting "on a global level", is suspected of defrauding card users of millions of euros. A key member of the Romanian mafia has been based in Dublin for the last decade. Members of his gang would send stolen details to affiliates around the globe where cloned cards would be used to steal vast sums of cash. The same crime boss flew in hundreds of young pickpockets last spring to target tourists’ credit cards. The lower members of gang are allowed to keep cash they steal but have to hand over credit cards and mobile phones. Many are badly treated and live in cheap over-crowded flats. Pleseru’s flat in Cabra was described as being “basic” with hardly any luxuries. Some of the cards stolen in Dublin were cloned as used within the hour as far away as Madrid and Oslo. In Europe there were victims of their hi-tech “skimming” operations in the UK, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey as well as Romania. There were more suspected victims in Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Morocco and New Zealand, according to Belgian authorities. A total of 34 police raids involving 250 officers were made in six EU nations - Belgium, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Romania and Spain. A total of 15 people were arrested, seven in Belgium, six in Romania and two in Spain. The Belgian public prosecutor said that in one weekend alone “several hundreds of millions of euros” had been taken from accounts in several countries with fake cards used in Sydney. The skimmers operate highly-efficient teams, which arrive in Ireland for stints of five or six weeks at a time to skim card details. They are usually accompanied by a senior member of the gang who acts as an ‘auditor’ to make sure the skimmers hand over all the money. In a variation of the scam the brazen fraudsters posing a technician installed fake card readers in a number of shops in Cork and Galway. The equipment was set up to work as normal but would also allow the skimmers to download a customer’s secret pin number. In one of the most high-profile cases three members of a Romanian skimming team were caught by the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation in September 2005 Sorin Condrache, Daniela Ciocan and Rasvan Schiopu were each jailed for four years for the scam. Gardai found false ATM fronts, a number of digital cameras, €20,000 in cash and home-made loyalty cards in their Bray apartment.
- Eamon Dillon, Sunday World, 5 July 2009. eamon.dillon@sundayworld.com |
|
Home |
|
Books |
|
News Stories |
|
Fraud blog |
