CHON BURI, May 9 – Police in the Thai seaside resort of Pattaya arrested two Bulgarian men Tuesday as they used counterfeit ATM cards to withdraw cash worth millions of baht.
Pattaya police chief Pol Lt Col Chiddecha Songhong, heading the anti-transnational crime centre, said the two detainees were identified as Prodanov Georgi Petrov and Katsarsku Boris Georgiev, both aged 34.
Police also seized 27 electronic bank cards during the arrest.
Col Chiddecha said Siam Commercial Bank had informed police that foreign nationals, using fake ATM cards, withdrew cash from automated teller machine across the city.
Police were able to arrest the pair as they used the fake cards to withdraw money from an ATM machine at Jomtien Beach.
They confessed to police that they got the counterfeit cards from a Russian man and were supposed to later transfer the withdrawn funds to him, keeping ten per cent of the total as their commission.
The accrued damage they inflicted reached several million baht as both men continued to withdraw money for a month, while the card owners whose identities were falsely used were all living overseas.
Col Chiddecha said investigation is underway seeking further arrests in the ATM skimming gang.
