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Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) has revealed a criminal network comprising Russian and Armenian nationals, who thieved a particularly large amount through fraudulent transactions involving bank cards of foreign customers.  

The release, issued by the government-affiliated agency reads, says according to the preliminary obtained data, the members of the organized group have registered three trade companied in Armenia under the false pretext of implementing hotel and restaurant business activity, obtained PoS terminal, allowing to make online transactions in absence of the banking card holders the card itself.
  
As the release goes on, one member of the criminal group residing in Russia have collected and sent to other group members the banking card data of number of Australian citizens, specifically the 16-digit identification numbers, the expiration dates and the Pin codes.
In part of the scheme the Armenia-based members of the group have installed a mobile SIM card in the PoS terminal, secured access to internet and then entered the obtained card data into the system, stealing a particularly large amount of money from Australian citizens and transferred the funds to the bank accounts of their companies by means of fraudulent pretense of payment for hotel and restaurant services. 

Through using the mentioned scheme the fraudsters have checked out around 85 million AMD from the bank card of the customers of the Australian banks, cashing out some 58 million AMD, while failing to complete the criminal actions. Due to operative - investigative actions of Armenia’s National Security Service, the criminal group has been revealed and detected.
  
Charges are pressed against five individuals, according to the RA Criminal Code Article 181, Part 3, Point 1, which is theft of somebody’s property in particularly large amount committed by an organized group with the use of computer. According to the source, three members of the group are arrested, while investigation measures are taken in close cooperation with foreign law enforcement bodies to reveal other potential members of the organized group.