Tonight, two Eastern European men are being held by Belize City police in connection with a massive ATM scam. Now, don't panic - because from what we've learned so far, they didn't scam local accounts, but here's what they did do.
The two men from Bulgaria stole ATM pin numbers in another country, then created their own ATM cards, and came to Belize to make huge withdrawals on those cards.
As we understand it, all the cards they scammed were international bank cards - meaning they can make withdrawals from any bank, anywhere in the world. And how did they steal the pin numbers? Well, our information says they installed hidden cameras on the ATM's - and got the pin numbers. Again, that did not happen in Belize - those pin numbers were stolen internationally - the scammers just came to Belize to make the withdrawals. According to our information, they conducted hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent transactions - and all that money was withdrawn from the Belize banking system.
It's a very high tech crime - but Belize's outdated laws have no specialized charges for cyber-theft, so tomorrow when they appear in court they will be charged for regular theft. We hope to have photos and more details tomorrow.
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