Be careful using ATMs, New Yorkers!
Manhattan prosecutors yesterday unveiled a nefarious debit-card ID-theft scam involving camouflaged skimming devices and pinhole cameras sneakily attached to ATMs as they charged two Bulgarian nationals with an 81-count indictment.
Prosecutors say limousine driver Dimitar Stamatov, 28, and mechanic Iordan Ivanov, 24, both residents of Canada, traveled to New York on at least two “vacation trips” this year — each time using double-sided tape to affix pinhole cameras and skimming devices to ATMs at Chase banks around Union Square and Astor Place.
The pair would leave the gizmos in place for four to six hours before retrieving them — along with the recorded card and PIN numbers of 1,500 victims, prosecutors said.
The pair then sent the info to unnamed co-conspirators, who encoded it on blank cards used to make purchases and withdrawals totaling nearly $300,000, officials said. They stole even more from other ATMs, prosecutors say. Those thefts are still being compiled.
The two were caught on East 14th Street in May, allegedly as they retrieved their skim-scam equipment and loaded it into their car.
Eagle-eyed Chase officials had found the skimmers and alerted the police.
Both defendants pleaded not guilty and are being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.