Last November, Cobb County police confronted two Bulgarian men after citizens reported their suspicious behavior at a Bank of America ATM machine on Windy Hill Road.
Police soon discovered the men had stolen bank debit card numbers and passwords by using a skimming device they attached to ATM machines around the metro area, allowing them to steal tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims’ accounts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
On Thursday, one of the defendants, Yordan Kavaklov, 29, was sentenced in federal court to four and a half years in prison for his role in the scheme. His co-defendant, Nikolay Nikolov, 23, will be sentenced later this month. Both men previously entered guilty pleas.
Kavaklov used an ATM skimming device to steal debit card numbers and passwords from more than 200 people, acting U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said in a statement.
At the time of their arrest, the two Bulgarians had 80 stolen gift cards with altered magnetic stripes with the passwords written on the face of the cards. An initial search of the defendants’ Jaguar and hotel room found more than $30,000 in cash, most of which was in $20 bills.
A later search yielded another $27,000 in cash, found inside a plastic bag in the door panel of the men’s Jaguar, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The two men orchestrated the scheme by attaching a skimming device to automated Bank of America teller machines that would record the card numbers of people who subsequently used the ATMs. A small camera would record the ATM keyboard when the customer entered his or her password, authorities said.
The men downloaded this information from the device and sent it to foreign e-mail accounts in Russia and Bulgaria. The men received e-mails in return, allowing them to upload the confidential information onto the magnetic stripes of gift cards, which they used to withdraw money from the accounts of customers whose debit card numbers and passwords had been stolen, authorities said.
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