The Hawks arrested two Bulgarian men on Sunday after 12 bank-card skimming devices were found in their house in Pretoria, said police.
Captain Paul Ramaloko reported that this was the largest number of the devices ever found in one operation.
The arrests came after the Hawks held a joint intelligence operation with the SA Revenue Service and the banking industry in Johannesburg.
“In their laboratory, [we found] 12 complete hi-tech bank card skimming devices with the accompanying cameras ready to be installed in ATMs, encoding machines, bank-card readers, laptops used to clone cards, various cellphones, cloned cards, documents containing details for skimming purposes, and the vehicle that the syndicate had used to put the devices in the ATMs,” said Ramaloko.
Police suspect that the men were mostly operating in the Johannesburg area.
They would appear in the Randburg magistrate’s court on Monday. — Sapa