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Europol busts international cross border skimming operation

Europol has led a successful operation that resulted in the arrest of a card skimming gang suspected of stealing more than EUR50 million from banks and consumers

July 17, 2011 by Lachlan Gunn — Director, BenAlpin Ltd

The European Police agency (Europol) has just had a resounding success in its fight against organized criminals conducting international card skimming operations. An operation code named Operation Night Clone has resulted in 61 arrests in 5 countries.

Two arrests were made in the U.S. and 47 in Bulgaria where the crimninal gang was headquartered. It is estimated that the criminal gang caused losses of €50 million to European card issuers with the majority of these occurring outside Europe in countries where all or some ATMs are not yet EMV compliant.

The issue of such losses occuring on cloned EMV cards outside of the EU or SEPA has long been highlighted by the European ATM Security Team (EAST). As long as EMV payment cards have an active magnetic stipe on them they remain vulnerable to skimming.

In their recently published Organized Crime Threat Assessment, Europol also stressed the point that the majority of losses relating to payment card fraud (on European cards) are now occurring outside of Europe in countries that have not adopted the EMV standard, with a significant percentage in the U.S.

EMV has effectively become the global standard for payment cards and hopefully this successful case will help those in the USA, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, pushing for its adoption. Two other central European bodies are now flagging this issue in addition to Europol - the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

It is good to see the issue of payment card skimming moving higher up the agendas of national and international government, judicial and law enforcment agencies. My only issue is when they call it a 'new' problem, as the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs has just done. The European private sector has been struggling for many years to draw attention to the problem of card skimming and has made significant investment into EMV, and into anti-skimming solutions.