SOFIA, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Spanish and Bulgarian authorities have dismantled an international criminal network of payment card fraudsters, and arrested 31 suspects, officials said here on Wednesday.
As many as 21 of the suspects were arrested in Spain, nine in Bulgaria and one in the Czech Republic, the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
Meanwhile, 48 house searches were carried out, 14 of them in Spain and 34 in Bulgaria, the statement said.
The suspects were in possession of equipment used to forge payment cards such as skimmers, micro cameras, devices to manipulate ATMs, as well as cash and numerous counterfeit cards, drugs and forged euro banknotes, the statement said.
Between 2014 and 2017, the criminal network installed skimming devices on an average of 400 ATMs every year, to copy and clone the data contained on the bank cards, the statement said.
The forged cards were then used to make illegal transactions in 200 ATMs outside the European Union.
The criminal network affected approximately 3,000 citizens of the European Union, with losses of at least 500,000 euros (some 561,000 U.S. dollars), it said.
