Zambia jails two Bulgarians

LUSAKA. — A court in Zambia has jailed two Bulgarians suspected of being international automated teller machine schemers who have been stealing money from people’s bank accounts, the Zambia Daily Mail reported yesterday. Ivanov Andrey Petrov (41), and his co-accused Velidolsk Kiril Metodiew (36), were given a five-year jail term by a court in central Zambia’s Kabwe district after they pleaded guilty of being in possession of implements of forgery.

Kabwe Resident Magistrate John Mbuzi said the court was sending the two accused to jail because the offence they committed was a serious offence.

“However, the offence you are charged with is a very serious offence and it carries a sentence of seven years.
“In a country where cyber crimes boggle the mind of ordinary citizens, if not stopped, many people will be losing their hard-earned money,” he was quoted as saying by the paper.

The jailing of the two, he said, will serve as a lesson to other ATM card schemers. The two were found with three high-tech pinhole camera bars, three magnetic card recorders, nine non-branded bank magnetic strip cards, an Acer laptop and data download cables. The pair was arrested on December 7 at a bank where they were inserting a device in an ATM machine. Early this year, the police said banks in the country had lost about US$4 million to cyber crime through automated teller machines. The police unearthed a scam in which some foreign nationals recruited and trained Zambians in cybercrime. — Xinhua.