Every day has become an interesting but worried day in cyber security’s world.  You may be surprised why I’m saying it. Just read this blog completely and share your views.

An alleged top supervisor of a Romanian criminality organization that U.S. authorities consider it responsible for integrating card-skimming devices at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) all over North America was arrested in Mexico. It happened last week on firearms charges. The arrest comes several weeks after the accused apparently ordered the implementation of a former defender who was trying to support U.S. establishments bring down the group’s profitable skimming processes.

On 31st of March, police in Cancun, Mexico blocked two Romanian people, recognized only as 42-year-old “Florian N” and 37-year-old “Adrian Nicholae N,” 37, for the custody of an illegal weapon and cash containing about 500K Mexican currency Pesos (USD $26K) in both American and Mexican exchanges.

The arrested two persons’ faces were somewhat hidden in the mug shots unrestricted to Mexican media. But as per the statement and multiple sources familiar with the investigation, the older person prevented (Left side of the picture) is Florian “The Shark” Tudor, supposed to be in custody of a fairly new ATM organization based in Mexico called Intacash. The person on the right has been recognized as Nicholae Cosmin, Tudor’s deputy.

Intacash was the central emphasis of a third-part investigation report published in 2015. That story followed the doings of a crime gang that was corrupting and otherwise forcing ATM technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers secret cash machines throughout popular tourist locations in and around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula — with Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen & Tulum.


This story got viral in media and meanwhile, Intcash’s apparatuses were about the only ATMs in top tourist locations in Mexico that weren’t ready to compromise with these Bluetooth integrated devices.
Policies including other security agencies and ATM industry sources found in that story said they believe Intacash is managed by Romanian nationals and that its key principals were the ones disbursing ATM specialists to compromise ATM systems at competing ATM providers.

As an observer, I discovered in reporting that series, it was thinkable to tell which ATMs were impacted in Mexico’s top tourist locations just by targeting each with a smartphone and looking for the existence of a Bluetooth signal beaconing out a wireless system with the name “Free2Move”.
This features permitted the crime group to get credit and debit card secret information and passwords from impacted ATMs wirelessly, without ever again having to touch the impacted machines.

Last year In April, report heard from a Romanian man who requested to have been working for Intacash. This specific seemed really alarmed for their security, but at the same time enthusiastic to share information about the organization’s operations and proprietors.

Some other reliable sources shared photos of Intacash’s chief assistants, as well as screenshots of card data allegedly hovered up by the organization’s different skimming processes. Furthermore, the source frequently informed me the Romanian criminal group was paying large sums of money to Mexican authorities to stay off their radar.

The last time I received information from that source was June 2018, only later a like-minded assistant at Intacash was found shot dead in his vehicle. The assistant, 44-year-old Sorinel Constantin Marcu, was already wished on a warrant from Interpol, the international criminal police organization.

In 2014, a Romanian law court released a criminal warrant for Marcu on charges of attempted murder back in his hometown of Craiova, Romanian’s 6th-biggest city. But Marcu was talented to escape to Mexico before he could be triage. The court later convicted Marcu in abstentia, leveling a sentence of eight years in jail.