1 million euro stolen in bank card fraud
Sunday May 18 2008
Around one million euro has been stolen from 300 bank accounts in one of the largest incidents of bank card fraud ever in Ireland.
It is understood bank cards were cloned at points of sale in shops and restaurants around Dublin in the last few weeks.
It is understood that criminal's paid shop and restaurant workers up to ten thousand euro to skim laser cards and find out their pin numbers by looking over their shoulder - a practice called "shoulder surfing".
The criminals withdrew cash from the unsuspecting victims in countries around mainland Europe, including Italy, Romania and Spain.
The largest single amount stolen from one account was 7 thousand 8 hundred euro.
Most of the withdrawals took place at the end of April and in early May, and many of the customers contacted their bank themselves to notify them of the irregularities because the banks fraud detection systems failed to pick up on the activity.
