EUROPEAN ARREST warrants have been issued for two people in Ireland as part of an investigation into ATM skimming which resulted in losses of €6.5 million.
Europol yesterday released details of the operation which took place in five EU countries over three days this week.
It targeted a group responsible for some 35,000 fraudulent transactions using some 15,000 bank cards. Gardaí said two of the suspects are believed to reside in Ireland. They co-ordinated searches but failed to find the two people.
They are now trying to establish if the suspects are still in Ireland.
There were 24 arrests made in the other countries involved, with eight arrests in Italy, two in the Netherlands, two in Belgium and 12 in Romania.
Europol said the operation had dealt a “massive blow” to a “large international skimming network”.
The operation was led by Italian police which described it as its biggest operation against a group responsible for payment-card fraud. In Belgium, two people had made withdrawals of €20,000 and were caught by police with hundreds of duplicated bank cards.
Judges, police officers and prosecutors from the member states co-ordinated the joint operation via videolink. The distribution of the arrest warrants and requests for wire taps were facilitated by Irish, Belgian, Italian, Dutch and Romanian magistrates ahead of the operation.
Skimming is placing a device over an ATM card slot to read the magnetic strip. A pinhole camera is often used to read the user’s pin and details of copied card-payments are used for illegal cash withdrawal.
