Wokingham

icBerkshire ~ Oct 20 2005

A ROMANIAN trio who were part of a credit card cloning scam on Wokingham shoppers have each been jailed for two years and will be deported.

The three men fitted a special device on a cash machine at the Co-op in London Road, enabling them to collect electronic data from the cards inserted and identify PIN numbers.

This information would have enabled them to clone the bank cards, a judge at Reading Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor John Causer said Catalin Ghilinta, Dragos Purda and Erik Solomon were all arrested on October 14 last year.

Mr Causer said: "It is a skimming case involving an ATM at the Co-op store in Wokingham.

"On October 14 last year, a woman was about to use the machine when she noticed there was a box on the front of it.

"She withdrew £30 and then noticed the box was hanging off. At that stage a man ran up and grabbed the box and made off towards Seaford Road. She saw there was another man with him."

The three men were arrested later the same day while driving a Ford Mondeo. Inside the car police found a bag of electrical equipment and other items often used by skimmers, but no cash.

Mr Causer added: "There was the intent to carry out a large-scale fraud."

But barristers defending the trio said their clients were just foot soldiers in an operation run by people who have not been traced.

Speaking on behalf of Purda, Jonathan Coode said: "It is not accepted that he played a sophisticated role in this operation.

"He met a man in a pub called Christy who asked him if he had work. He told the man that he had poorly paid work as a cleaner and Christy said he could find him better paid work.

"He arranged to meet him for the work which he understood to be the refurbishment of houses.

"That is how he got involved and his involvement only started on the day he was arrested."

Judge Stanley Spence was told that none of the men had any previous convictions.

Jailing each of them for two years he said: "I accept that you were all three foot soldiers, but it is quite clear you had a knowledge of the equipment. It was a sophisticated skimmer's kit."

As the three defendants have already been in custody for a year, they will be eligible for release almost immediately.

Ghilinta and Purda, both from Wembley, and Solomon, of no fixed address, all admitted conspiracy to defraud.