Five persons detained for manufacture, putting into circulation of forged cards in Moldova

Chisinau, 11 October /MOLDPRES/ - Five persons have been detained for the manufacture and putting into circulation of forged cards and other payment instruments. A head of section at the Chisinau municipality’s police, Veaceslav Manoli, made statements at a news conference today.    

Manoli noted that the suspects had been acting for two years. “The suspects were between 22 and 35 years of age and are residents of the capital. The group was managed by a 33-year-old man, who was leading the criminal activity in a flat rented in Chisinau. With the help of modern equipment, the suspect was cloning cards and their PIN codes. The data was received from European Union countries. The information regarded private persons who owned cards with money. The data was transmitted to cloned cards and the money was subsequently purloined from them,” Veaceslav Manoli said.      

For his part, a head of department at the National Investigations Inspectorate, Alexei Bacos, said that two of those five persons had been earlier prosecuted in EU countries and another two ones were convicted in Moldova for similar offences.

„The suspects have knowledge in the IT sector and in the banking system. The money purloined was used to lead a luxury lifestyle and some of the sums purloined were converted into Bitcoin virtual currency. Within searches made on this case, law-enforcers seized 23,000 euros, jewelry and three luxury cars. Levy will be put on these assets for the compensation of the damage inflicted,” Alexei Bacos said.   

Those five persons were put under 30-day arrest. If found guilty, the suspects run the risk of being sentenced to 4-8 years of imprisonment.    

(Reporter A. Ciobanu, editor A. Raileanu)