Thai police arrest Bulgarians for fake ATM withdrawals

BANGKOK, April 7 (TNA) - Police in Thailand's eastern Pattaya resort city have arrested five Bulgarian nationals for using fake credit cards to withdraw cashes from Thai banks’ automatic teller machines (ATMs). The police said on Friday that a Bulgarian suspect, identified as 38-year-old Stefan Nikolaev Savovski, was apprehended when he was withdrawing cash from a Siam Commercial Bank ATM in Pattaya; while the rest of the five-member gang, identified as 37-year-old Iliyan Alek Sandrov Ininski, 21-year-old Plamen Ivanov Hlebarov, 21-year-old Diana Dianova Dimitrova and 28-year-old Gergana Hristova Krekmanova, were later captured based on information provided by the first arrested suspect, and that 33 fake credit cards were seized. According to the Pattaya police, the first suspect confessed that his gang was hired by a group of Bulgarians in their home country who stole real data on the credit cards and made up the fake cards for them, and that the stolen money was transferred to Bulgaria via Western Union, a financial services and communications company based in the United States, and they earned 10 per cent of the total withdrawn from the Thai ATMs. Pattaya immigration police vowed that they will conduct stricter screening against such the international criminals from entering Thailand in the future. (TNA)