TWO Romanians were caught withdrawing money from automated teller machines (ATM) using fraudulent cards in Mandaue City, apparently trying to take advantage of “loose” security near most of these units.
Petru Ion Uveges, 43, and Stefania Mihaela Osman, 36, were the second and third Romanians arrested for the same offense in Cebu within six weeks.
They are apparently members of an international syndicate whose aim is to hack bank accounts of British nationals and withdraw the money through ATMs in the Philippines, said Supt. Marlon Tayaba, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7.
Initial investigation disclosed that Uveges, who has a three-year-old Philippine-issued driver’s license, has been withdrawing peso-currency bills for almost a year in Cebu’s ATMs. He operated somewhere in Pampanga before.
A bank representative called the CIDG 7 by phone last Saturday night, informing the police that they tracked a series of dubious transactions in ATMs located in Barangay Tipolo.
The CIDG, with the aid of Mandaue City Police Intelligence Branch, then caught the two Romanians withdrawing from a machine around 7 p.m.
Detectives recovered P52,000 cash, 67 fraudulent British Export cards, eight loyalty reward cards of Cebu-based stores and bank withdrawal receipts from the suspects.
(The bank asked not to have its name mentioned in the news.)
Tayaba said the bank found the two foreigners’ transactions dubious because they noticed in their system that foreign-based cards under different names were intermittently used to withdraw from one machine to another.
“The maximum allowable withdrawal is only P50,000, but using these cards, they can manage to withdraw up to P500,000,” Tayaba said.
They are reportedly led by a German hacker, who would hack a bank account from a foreign country and deliver it to Uveges, who would then encrypt the stolen data in the digital strips behind loyalty reward cards.
Tayaba classified Uveges and Osman as “harvesters”, whose job is only the withdrawal of money.
“We have a strong suspicion that the cloning (of cards) is done here (in the country),” Tayaba said. He assured that an investigation has been started, in cooperation with bank managers, to detect the group’s headquarters, if there is any, here.
Some bank managers reportedly told Tayaba that “harvesters” are operating in the Philippines because the security details of its local ATM cards are not updated yet.
While cards from other countries are embedded with personalized microchips, debit cards in the country still depend on a black horizontal strip on the back, which Tayaba said is easy to manipulate.
When sought for comment about his arrest, Uveges had this to say: “Are you police? I talk to the police. The police arrested me, not the media.”
Last Sept. 20, Romanian economist Gheorghe Adelin Stretcu was arrested by the Cebu City Intelligence Branch (CIB) when a mall security guard saw him withdrawing money from one machine, then another.
The guard found this dubious, so he called the police.
Stretcu alleged that his hacker colleague is named Skinhead of Frankfurt, a German national operating somewhere in Europe.
Tayaba said that although the syndicated group’s alleged victims are mostly Europeans, there is no assurance they haven’t victimized a Filipino yet.
“Hindi natin alam, baka kamag-anak natin na nasa abroad, e di Pinoy din ‘yun (A fellow Filipino overseas might have been victimized),” he said.
Uveges and Osman will face complaints for violating Republic Act 8484, or the Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998, before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor.
The law prohibits “the use of a falsified document, false information, fictitious identities and addresses, or any form of false pretense or misrepresentation” in the application of an access device like banking cards.
Tayaba, however, said the two foreigners can post bail at P24,000 each while the case is ongoing.