15.06.2025
6 min read
Crime Tourism – ATM Skimming Operations
We’ve all been there, choosing our next travel destination. What should be a fun and exciting experience, can sometimes be stressful and overwhelming as there are many factors that can impact on our choice of a travel destination, to name a few: budget, travel companions, timing, weather and popular attractions.
For some people, the decision factors that go into choosing a travel destination are completely different. These people are looking at:
Those people are “Crime Tourists.”
Usually, when we hear the combination of the words “crime” and “tourism” they are being referred to in a context of a tourist falling victim to crimes, but there is another side to that coin. A side which represents crimes committed by the tourist. Crime tourism has many faces and sophisticated schemes. In this article, we will share an overview of one aspect of crime tourism – ATM skimming.
ATM skimming is a type of fraud which occurs when an ATM is compromised by a skimming device, usually a card reader being disguised to look like a part of the machine. The card reader saves the victim’s card information and a hidden camera captures the pin code. In a later stage, the stolen card data is replicated into a counterfeit copy for fraudulent use.
For the past decade, an organized crime syndicate has been spreading its operations worldwide with Financial Institutions from the UK, East Europe, South America, Africa, Israel, Thailand, India, and the U.S. all reporting a similar narrative – a Romanian passport holder arrives at his “vacation” destination and skim different devices (ATMs, gas pumps and other POS terminals), stealing money from unsuspecting victims and then launder their funds using cryptocurrency right before they flee the country.
Experts estimate ATM skimming fraud cost consumers more than $1.3 billion annually worldwide. In 2018, there have been more than 25 reports across 17 states of ATM skimming, allegedly being made by Romanians (and these are only the ones who got caught and reported).
The Romanian mafia is no different than any other organized crime; just like any legitimate businesses, it’s designed as a pyramid structure. The Mafia has advisors who work closely with the ‘Boss’ to assign tasks to different crews, their superiors (captains), and soldiers who carry out the work.
Loretta Napoleoni, a Macroeconomist studying the connection between terrorism and economy, shared that by interviewing dozens of terrorist and organized crime members she arrived at the following conclusion:
“The ideology and the political vision is decided by the leadership, which generally never more than five to seven people. All the others do, day in and day out, is search for money.”
It may surprise you to learn that about 23% of U.S. citizens still make all their purchases using cash. According to forecasts, by 2021 cash will represent 11.2% of the U.S. GDP.
Since financial institutions are slow to adopt technologies and a 15-year-old machine running a Windows 95 OS is fairly common, the U.S. is the perfect location for skimming. Even though we’ve seen some interesting “Anti-skimming” solutions for ATMs in recent years their have not been implemented in a grand scale.
The Mafia is counting on the fact that it’s impossible to prevent a single nation from visiting a country simply because some of them might end up being involved in illegal activities during their stay. A customs declaration form asking for the purpose of the visit will unlikely read “I’m here to steal!”
The Dark Web allows all skimming devices and tools to be shipped to any address in the country and at the same time find a lodging solution while staying anonymous. This usually isn’t a problem because the Foreign Head of Operations can set up shop and carry out the skimming operation immediately.
Financial institutions don’t have the authority to arrest criminals, and local law enforcement in most cases don’t have the much-needed knowledge or are too slow to react. In cases of successful arrests, the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service do a great job in putting pressure on these criminals to turn in their superiors and even finding higher members in the organization’s chain of command, linking ATM skimming cases to Euro-Asian crime groups.
The issue with getting to the top of the pyramid is that the arrested criminals are afraid to cooperate because it would put themselves and their loved ones in jeopardy. For that reason, they plead guilty and are sentenced to do a relativity short jail time following by deportation back to their home country. Since the soldiers are disposable and new recruits always readily available, the Mafia has zero risk for exposure and incarceration.
In summary, controlling skimming fraud requires patience, ongoing cooperation of financial institutions, software & hardware solutions, and finally local law enforcement. This effort should be led by a federal entity with the support of the justice system to create a centralized solution for monitoring and reacting.
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