Five Bulgarians Arrested After Stealing UK Bank Data

Five individuals have been arrested after an investigation by the European Cybercrime Centre and its partners into the theft of reams of UK bank data.

The crooks allegedly gathered banking information online, which was then used to create fake credit and debit cards. All arrests took place in Poland, where two were caught red handed trying to take money from ATMs using stolen cards, whilst another was captured whilst online gathering more bank data.

Bank data nabbed

Most of the information that was subsequently used to draw funds illegally was from the UK, but other unnamed nations were affected.

The suspects were said to have worked with others from Eastern Europe, so more arrests are expected.

Police seized magnetic strip readers and writers, computers, phones, flash drives, dozens of forged payment cards with records of PIN numbers, and a vehicle worth over €25,000 (£20,590)

Head of the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) Troels Oerting said: “This is another great example of joint efforts between Member States and EC3 to protect customers and electronic payments across the European Union (EU). Police forces in the EU are utilising Europol’s unique tools to make electronic payment transactions safer. We are continuously investing more resources into this vital support platform, and we can now see the results of this teamwork.”

Hackers buy and sell credit card information on underground forums every day. Major breaches, such as the one involving US retail giant Target, lead to floods of such data hitting the dark markets.

In November last year, the EC3 announced the arrest of 29 individuals said to have been carrying out similar attacks to those on Target. They may have caused losses of at least $12 million (£7.5m) to European organisations.

Are you a security expert? Try our quiz!