Cyber gypsies on the lam in Thailand with 5000 stolen cards

Four Romanian tourists were arrested in Thailand accused of perpetrating an ATM credit card scam that stretched around the world.

In a scam that brought them 100 million baht ($A3.3 million) and the theft of 7000 credit cards, the group used a card reader and a hard drive to collect the money, while card details were held in a hard drive.

 Florin Eugen Gavrila, 33, was arrested in Phuket's Thalang district yesterday and soon after his wife Alexandra, 26, was arrested along with Claudiu Constantin Vilvoi, 36, and Bogdan Constantin Ene, 23. According to Phuket Wan tourism news, the four appeared yesterday at Phuket's Tourist Police headquarters.

It was reported that Ene demonstrated the ease with which the four used blank credit cards and a card reader, embedded with personal numbers and information, to make withdrawals whenever they wished, having skimmed thousands of cards in their scam. 

They had 211 blank white cards with magnetic strips and a stockpile of details from 5000 people in Britain and another 2000 from Latvia. SC Magazine doesn't know if Australians were caught in the alleged crime ring's scam.

The gang was able to determine which people with cards were least likely to notice missing cash and targeted the elderly and wealthy.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com