Two Bulgarian nationals have been arrested in Accra for cloning the ATM’s of unsuspecting victims and withdrawing money from their accounts.
The two – 24 year old Nikolay Petev Nedyalkov and 33 year old Petar Petrov Yardanov – were arrested by the CID after a drawn out operation to uncover their tracks and methods of operation.
The two apparently utilised CCTV cameras installed around ATM’s to gather information on users cards, and subsequently cloned the cards to make withdrawals at their own leisure, utilising the Gh-link platform, which allows withdrawals across several banking platforms.
According to the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, Commissioner of Police Mr Prosper Agblor, the police commenced their investigations after Prudential Bank lodged a complaint from several customers about unauthorised withdrawals from their accounts.
The team got onto the perpetrators trail after an unauthorised withdrawal was monitored via CCTV, leading to identification of the lead suspect.
Nedyalkov was initially arrested after being spotted, but Yardanov escaped, only to be arrested at his hideout in Dzorwulu.
The Daily Graphic writes….

“…A search on him (Nedyalkov) led to the retrieval of 24 ATM cards suspected to have  been cloned, four pink sticker sheets with numbers written on them suspected to be the corresponding pin codes of the ATM cards and six ATM printout receipts with amounts between GH¢140 and GH¢280.
Later, he said the police recovered a Honda motorbike, two laptops which had a cloning software installed on them, one hard drive, two routers and 10 dismantled CCTV cameras when a search was conducted in Nedyalkov’s house.
They also found a projector, some electrical tools, a piece of paper with a combination of numbers suspected to be ATM pin codes and a suspected cloned ATM card similar to the ones captured by the bank’s ATM.
However, Mr Agblor said Yardanov, who was Nedyalkov’s accomplice, escaped when the police went to his house at East Legon to search it, but was arrested at his hideout at Dzorwulu on June 8, 2016.
He said the two were currently assisting the police with investigations.