POLICE arrested a Romanian national who allegedly used a convenience store’s reward cards for withdrawing money his group hacked from bank accounts of foreigners.
Supt. Romeo Santander, Cebu City Intelligence Branch (CIB) chief, identified the suspect as Gheorghe Adelin Stretcu, 32.
“He belongs to a syndicated group,” he told reporters yesterday.
Stretcu had allegedly taken millions in peso currency from automated teller machines (ATM) after he arrived in the country last Sept. 17.
“He admitted they selected the Philippines because it reportedly has one of the weakest ATM security features in the world,” said Santander.
CIB operatives caught him inside a mall in Cebu City last Sunday afternoon.
They seized 90 reward cards from the suspect, an economist and employee at the airport in his home country.
These reward cards can be bought at P10 each from the convenience store.
He told police his group’s alleged victims are only Europeans and they did not hack Filipinos’ credit cards.
Each card contains about P20,000 each and it can only be used once.
A complaint for violating Republic Act(RA) 8484 (Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998) was filed against Stretcu before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor’s yesterday afternoon.
RA 8484 regulates the issuance of access devices like credit cards.
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.
Stretcu admitted to police that his German national friend, nicknamed Skinhead of Frankfurt, was the one who hacked information from credit card holders in Europe.
Skinhead reportedly used special computer software and encoded the personal identification number into the black magnetic strip at the back of the reward cards.
Before the arrest at past 4 p.m., the mall security personnel noticed Stretcu withdrawing cash from different ATMs.
They later called Santander, who sent his team to observe the foreigner.
Intelligence officers noticed Stretcu used a light-green card from a convenience store in getting bills from the ATMs.
They approached the foreigner and invited him for an interview.
Santander said Stretcu admitted he used the cards to illegally withdraw cash from different people’s credit card accounts.
The foreigner’s visa will expire on Oct. 17. He lived with a fellow Romanian in Cebu City and he planned to return home yesterday.
Santander said Stretcu may face deportation.
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