2 ROMANIANS GANGSTERS JAILED FOR USING SOPHISTICATED COMPUTER VIRUS TO STEAL 1.6MILLION POUNDS FROM ATMs

Grigore Paladi, 40, who was jailed for five years, is pictured at one of the cash machines

Two Romanian gangsters who stole £1.6million from cash machines across Britain by infecting them with a sophisticated computer virus have been jailed for a total of seven years.
Emanual Leahu, 30, and Gheorge Mirzac, 32, were members of an Eastern European gang who raided 51 ATMs on the May Bank Holiday weekend in 2014.
Targeting stand-alone Cardtronic ATMs, they gained access to the machines and infected them with malware.

Once they had got into the operating system they were able to methodically empty its contents, 40 notes at a time.
After the fraudsters had taken what they wanted, the malware deleted itself - removing any trace it had ever existed.
Leahu and Mirzac were part of a team behind raids in Bognor Regis, Brighton, Liverpool, London and Portsmouth, Inner London Crown Court heard.
Leahu was arrested by City of London Police officers in Bacau, Romania, last September and extradited to the UK.
Mirzac was arrested by French police in Cannes in January this year on a European arrest warrant. He was extradited to the UK in February.


Emanual Leahu (left), 30, and Gheorge Mirzac (right), 32, were members of an Eastern European gang who raided 51 ATMs on the May Bank Holiday weekend in 2014

Leahu was jailed for four years and ten months while Mirzac was sentenced to two years and ten months for conspiracy to defraud.
Two other gang members were previously jailed for involvement in the same plot.
Teofil Bortos, 37, was jailed for seven years in January 2016, while Grigore Paladi, 40, was sentenced to five years imprisonment in 2015.
Bortos had spent his share of the profits from the fraud on a boys' holiday to Thailand and trips to Istanbul and his native Romania.

Prosecutor Timothy Godfrey had earlier described it as a 'carefully planned and sophisticated scam whereby a criminal gang obtained access to 51 ATMs or cash machines over the spring bank holiday weekend at the end of May 2014'.
He added: 'This occurred at locations around England, from Blackpool in the North to Brighton on the South coast.
'The computers inside the cash machines were tampered with so as to enable the criminals to remove cash from the machines in large quantities.
'The scam was carried out by loading a computer virus, or malware, onto the computer in the ATMs.'

Teofil Bortos (left), 37, was jailed for seven years in January 2016, while Paladi (right), 40, was sentenced to five years imprisonment in 2015

The gang were first spotted pulling off the scam in Clapham High Street on May 16, 2014 when two Eastern European men were seen tampering with an ATM.

Leahu and Mirzac were arrested and a handwritten list of ATM locations across London, Borehamwood in Hertfordshire and Brighton were recovered.

Despite strong evidence against them, the two suspects were freed on bail and went on the run, the court heard. Paladi was caught tampering with a cash machine in Liverpool on May 21, 2015.

Bortos was caught on July 7, 2015 at London Luton Airport as he got off a flight from Bacua in Romania. None of the money has ever been recovered and it is thought to have been invested in Romania.

Leahu and Mirzac, both of no fixed address, were convicted of conspiracy to defraud. Bortos, of East Ham, East London, and Paladi, of Portsmouth, previously admitted the same offence.

Katie Watkins, police staff investigator, said: 'Leahu and Mirzac both played an integral part in an Eastern European gang that executed a well-planned and highly sophisticated attack on cash machines located across the UK.

'The gang members demonstrated a massive amount of complacency in that they believed they would get away with a complex attack on the ATM machines.

'Today's result demonstrates that even the most complex of crimes will be pursued, and those responsible brought before the courts to face justice.

'We have worked tirelessly with a number of other law enforcement agencies to ensure that every key member of this criminal network is convicted for their crimes.'