The international operation, ‘Pandora-Storm’, succeeded with the apprehension of the organised crime group members involved in sophisticated manipulations of POS terminals in big shopping centres across Europe and also online fraud. During the operation, 2 illegal workshops for producing devices and software to manipulate POS terminals were dismantled.
The organised crime group has affected nearly 36.000 bank/credit card holders in 16 European countries. The group’s modus operandi involved sophisticated methods of stealing people’s credit and debit card numbers and PIN codes by implanting card reading devices and malicious software on POS terminals. Such crimes pose a huge threat as within a short period of time, thousands of customers across Europe can be victims of fraud.
The criminals used counterfeit payment cards with stolen data for further illegal transactions mainly in Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the US. The members of the group are also responsible for setting up a sophisticated criminal network for online fraud.
The investigation was run by the Romanian Cybercrime Unit and a specialised Organised Crime Division of the Prosecutor’s Office (DIICOT) together with valuable support from 20 different law enforcement agencies from Europe, America and Australia. Europols EC3 facilitated co-operation with European and overseas states.
Payment card fraud is an extremely lucrative business. The EU is the world’s largest market for payment card transactions and it is estimated that organised crime groups derive more than EUR 1.5 billion a year from payment card fraud in the EU.
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