Bulgaria’s Sofia Airport Customs Officers Seize 50 Skimming Devices

Customs officers at Bulgaria’s Sofia International Airport have discovered and seized about 50 skimming devices being shipped in courier parcels to destinations abroad.

The electronic devices used to steal electronic information from bank cards were found in six parcels for express delivery sent by Bulgarian citizens to customers in China, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia and Spain, the National Customs Agency in Sofia said on Friday.

The skimming devices were placed among printed circuit boards in pieces of electronic equipment, the customs agency said.

A skimming device, or a skimmer, attached to the genuine keypad or card reader of an ATM by fraudsters reads and copies all the information stored electronically on the magnetic stripe of a debit or credit card. The perpetrators then use the information to drain the bank account of the victim of card fraud.