Dedworth
18th June 2013, 20:03
The city of Bacau used to be known as one of the poorest places in Romania. Workers laboured in factories or on farmland just to earn a pittance.
But now it is booming. Where there were once merely streets and streets of high-rise flats and run-down shacks, there are now gleaming mansions, some even boasting rooftop hot tubs.
Porsches, Range Rovers and BMWs are parked in the drives and a Range Rover Evoque is on display outside the city’s new shopping mall, which is packed with designer boutiques.
On the road into town is a Mercedes dealership.
Plush restaurants serving champagne and caviar line the city’s main street, alongside flashy bars and exclusive nightclubs.
The city’s new wealth is down to one thing. Bacau is now the cashpoint theft capital of the world — and the rich rewards are clear to see everywhere.
British police recently revealed that nine out of ten cashpoint thefts in the UK are committed by Romanian gangs, while 70 per cent of those arrested for the crimes either came from Bacau or have links to it.
One such gang member was former football star Aurelian Zlati, who played for Romanian club FCM Bacau and went on to become part of a cashpoint scam in the UK.
Zlati, 27, who also played as an international, was spotted removing a card-cloning device from an Abbey National outside an Asda store in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He was jailed for 21 months.
According to one Romanian lawyer, proceeds of crime now make up more than 75 per cent of Bacau’s economy.
Until a few years ago not many people outside Romania had heard of the city, which nestles at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the north east of the country, close to the border with Moldova
That changed in 2008 when a photo came to light of a baby rolling around amidst hundreds of £20 notes which had been stolen from British bank accounts.
The snap was found on a mobile phone belonging to the baby’s dad, Adu Bunu, a member of a Romanian gang which had “skimmed” hundreds of UK cashpoint machines.
Bunu, 34, originally from Bacau, and his gang got away with more than £1million from a cashpoint crime spree in the UK which involved cloning 2,000 cards.
The crook posted the picture online to show his family back in Romania how well he was doing in the UK.
He and a pal — who later fled abroad — fixed fake fronts to cash machines, which let them pinch users’ account numbers and PINs.
Cops found the snap of his son, plus bank details and fake cashpoint fronts, in a raid on his home.
Bunu, of Wakefield, West Yorks, was convicted at Hull Crown Court of theft and conspiracy and was jailed for five years.
One of the most successful cashpoint gangs was run by Bacau-born brothers Viorel and Miorel Chiriac, who are estimated to have made £1.6million from skimming machines in London. Much of the cash was used to buy a string of properties in Bacau, including a mansion that Viorel had built in what is fast becoming the city’s Beverly Hills area.
Despite mail addressed to him being clearly visible on the doorstep of the mansion, a man there claimed to The Sun: “He sold the house two years ago. I don’t know where he is.”
In a nearby street Chiriac’s ex-wife Camelia, who lives in a flat, insisted: “He is not guilty. It’s all over the internet that he is a mafia boss, a crime king, but he didn’t do anything. I’ve got documents that prove he is innocent.
“We split up in February this year and I don’t know where he is. I don’t know anything about houses. I don’t know what he owns.”
Camelia, who has a son of 19 with Chiriac, added: “I lived in Britain with him for six years. We lived on social security. We didn’t steal.
“I was implicated by the Romanian authorities just because I am his wife, but I have done nothing.”
Camelia showed us an official-looking letter, apparently from the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, stating that a series of fraud charges against Viorel Chiriac had been dropped earlier this year.
ut back in Britain the CPS said they had no record of any case against him being halted.
A spokesman said: “According to our records he pleaded guilty earlier this year to criminal damage to property in London.”
Romanian authorities say Viorel was sentenced in February last year at Bacau’s Court of Justice to three years for forgery of electronic payment instruments, while his brother Miorel is serving three years in a German jail for similar offences.
The Chiriacs’ gang are just one of dozens based in Romania who are stealing millions, if not billions, from cashpoints worldwide. Romanian gangs have been found operating as far away as Australia and America.
Commander Steve Head speaking in 2012 said: “We can see quite clearly what they are doing with the money back in Romania.
“They are spending it on a lavish lifestyle, flash cars, flash houses.”
In recent years courts all over Britain have seen an increase in cases involving Romanian cashpoint gangs. The near-industrial scale of their activities makes the current crime trend of shoulder surfing — reading someone’s PIN over their shoulder at the cashpoint, then grabbing their card and fleeing — look amateurish in comparison.
Last December Leonid Rotaru appeared at Taunton Crown Court in Somerset, charged with being part of a gang that got away with the details of 9,000 cards and a potential theft of £3million.
Rotaru, 32, fitted skimming devices to cashpoint machines. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence.***
Chief Commissioner Virgil Spiridon, head of Romania’s cybercrime squad, told The Sun: “Gangs from Bacau travel mostly to the UK — they like it there. We have other gangs in Romania who operate in France, but the Bacau gangs go to Britain. Maybe it is because they have a good result there.”
But the city’s boom times may soon be over, according to Mr Spiridon. Over the past few months British police have travelled to Romania to meet their counterparts to devise a way of bringing the cashpoint crime spree to an end.
He said: “We had a meeting just last week. We are working together on a new project, a new initiative. It will be a big thing but I can’t reveal any details about it at the moment.
“We need co-operation to counter this huge problem. There is going to be a big crackdown, that’s for sure.”
One person who might prove helpful to British and Romanian cops is 33-year-old Valentin Boanta, a former skimming machine producer.
He was jailed for five years in 2009 for helping hundreds of criminal gangs steal from cashpoints. While he was in prison he invented a machine that can stop skimming.
In fact, his new gadget is so good that it won a prize at Geneva’s International Invention Exhibition.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4973076/bacau-is-capital-of-uk-cashpoint-theft.html#ixzz2Wb0zImIM
:censored: SCUM :cwm23:
***I posted previously about the limp wristed judge giving this piece of crap a suspended sentence
But now it is booming. Where there were once merely streets and streets of high-rise flats and run-down shacks, there are now gleaming mansions, some even boasting rooftop hot tubs.
Porsches, Range Rovers and BMWs are parked in the drives and a Range Rover Evoque is on display outside the city’s new shopping mall, which is packed with designer boutiques.
On the road into town is a Mercedes dealership.
Plush restaurants serving champagne and caviar line the city’s main street, alongside flashy bars and exclusive nightclubs.
The city’s new wealth is down to one thing. Bacau is now the cashpoint theft capital of the world — and the rich rewards are clear to see everywhere.
British police recently revealed that nine out of ten cashpoint thefts in the UK are committed by Romanian gangs, while 70 per cent of those arrested for the crimes either came from Bacau or have links to it.
One such gang member was former football star Aurelian Zlati, who played for Romanian club FCM Bacau and went on to become part of a cashpoint scam in the UK.
Zlati, 27, who also played as an international, was spotted removing a card-cloning device from an Abbey National outside an Asda store in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He was jailed for 21 months.
According to one Romanian lawyer, proceeds of crime now make up more than 75 per cent of Bacau’s economy.
Until a few years ago not many people outside Romania had heard of the city, which nestles at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the north east of the country, close to the border with Moldova
That changed in 2008 when a photo came to light of a baby rolling around amidst hundreds of £20 notes which had been stolen from British bank accounts.
The snap was found on a mobile phone belonging to the baby’s dad, Adu Bunu, a member of a Romanian gang which had “skimmed” hundreds of UK cashpoint machines.
Bunu, 34, originally from Bacau, and his gang got away with more than £1million from a cashpoint crime spree in the UK which involved cloning 2,000 cards.
The crook posted the picture online to show his family back in Romania how well he was doing in the UK.
He and a pal — who later fled abroad — fixed fake fronts to cash machines, which let them pinch users’ account numbers and PINs.
Cops found the snap of his son, plus bank details and fake cashpoint fronts, in a raid on his home.
Bunu, of Wakefield, West Yorks, was convicted at Hull Crown Court of theft and conspiracy and was jailed for five years.
One of the most successful cashpoint gangs was run by Bacau-born brothers Viorel and Miorel Chiriac, who are estimated to have made £1.6million from skimming machines in London. Much of the cash was used to buy a string of properties in Bacau, including a mansion that Viorel had built in what is fast becoming the city’s Beverly Hills area.
Despite mail addressed to him being clearly visible on the doorstep of the mansion, a man there claimed to The Sun: “He sold the house two years ago. I don’t know where he is.”
In a nearby street Chiriac’s ex-wife Camelia, who lives in a flat, insisted: “He is not guilty. It’s all over the internet that he is a mafia boss, a crime king, but he didn’t do anything. I’ve got documents that prove he is innocent.
“We split up in February this year and I don’t know where he is. I don’t know anything about houses. I don’t know what he owns.”
Camelia, who has a son of 19 with Chiriac, added: “I lived in Britain with him for six years. We lived on social security. We didn’t steal.
“I was implicated by the Romanian authorities just because I am his wife, but I have done nothing.”
Camelia showed us an official-looking letter, apparently from the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, stating that a series of fraud charges against Viorel Chiriac had been dropped earlier this year.
ut back in Britain the CPS said they had no record of any case against him being halted.
A spokesman said: “According to our records he pleaded guilty earlier this year to criminal damage to property in London.”
Romanian authorities say Viorel was sentenced in February last year at Bacau’s Court of Justice to three years for forgery of electronic payment instruments, while his brother Miorel is serving three years in a German jail for similar offences.
The Chiriacs’ gang are just one of dozens based in Romania who are stealing millions, if not billions, from cashpoints worldwide. Romanian gangs have been found operating as far away as Australia and America.
Commander Steve Head speaking in 2012 said: “We can see quite clearly what they are doing with the money back in Romania.
“They are spending it on a lavish lifestyle, flash cars, flash houses.”
In recent years courts all over Britain have seen an increase in cases involving Romanian cashpoint gangs. The near-industrial scale of their activities makes the current crime trend of shoulder surfing — reading someone’s PIN over their shoulder at the cashpoint, then grabbing their card and fleeing — look amateurish in comparison.
Last December Leonid Rotaru appeared at Taunton Crown Court in Somerset, charged with being part of a gang that got away with the details of 9,000 cards and a potential theft of £3million.
Rotaru, 32, fitted skimming devices to cashpoint machines. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence.***
Chief Commissioner Virgil Spiridon, head of Romania’s cybercrime squad, told The Sun: “Gangs from Bacau travel mostly to the UK — they like it there. We have other gangs in Romania who operate in France, but the Bacau gangs go to Britain. Maybe it is because they have a good result there.”
But the city’s boom times may soon be over, according to Mr Spiridon. Over the past few months British police have travelled to Romania to meet their counterparts to devise a way of bringing the cashpoint crime spree to an end.
He said: “We had a meeting just last week. We are working together on a new project, a new initiative. It will be a big thing but I can’t reveal any details about it at the moment.
“We need co-operation to counter this huge problem. There is going to be a big crackdown, that’s for sure.”
One person who might prove helpful to British and Romanian cops is 33-year-old Valentin Boanta, a former skimming machine producer.
He was jailed for five years in 2009 for helping hundreds of criminal gangs steal from cashpoints. While he was in prison he invented a machine that can stop skimming.
In fact, his new gadget is so good that it won a prize at Geneva’s International Invention Exhibition.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4973076/bacau-is-capital-of-uk-cashpoint-theft.html#ixzz2Wb0zImIM
:censored: SCUM :cwm23:
***I posted previously about the limp wristed judge giving this piece of crap a suspended sentence