SOPHISTICATED equipment was fitted to a town centre bank ATM in a bid to capture account holders’ card details, a court heard.

It was the report of suspected suspicious activity by one user of the machine, on the Front Street branch of Barclay’s, in Chester-le-Street, in February this year, that led to the discovery of the ‘skimming’ device fitted onto the card slot.

Durham Crown Court heard that a small camera was also attached above to try to capture the personal identification numbers tapped into the keypad by the users.

Richard Bennett, prosecuting, said to ensure more people used the tampered machine, the perpetrators stuffed paper into the card slot of the nearest alternative ATM, rendering it disabled.

As a result of the complaint by the customer, a town centre CCTV camera was focused onto the machine in question, and minutes later defendants Florea Singeorzan and Kiril Dimitrov were seen returning to the scene.

A third unknown accomplice evaded detection.

Mr Bennett said police were, “alive to it”, as complaints had been made by other customers, between December and mid-February.

As a result of their arrests, police recovered a card reader, a mobile phone handset and an iPad.

Inquiries revealed one card cloned as a result was used to buy £1,400 of goods and cash at a Tesco store branch.

Appearing at a plea hearing last week, the pair, speaking via Romanian and Bulgarian interpreters, admitted possessing articles for use in fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation, with others ‘unknown’, between December 8 and February 19.

The court heard that Singeorzan, 40, of Cardigan Street, Middlesbrough, has a number of previous convictions for computer-related fraud, in Italy, for which he has been imprisoned several times.

Dimitrov, 31, of no fixed abode, has no previous offences.

Scott Smith, for Singeorzan, and Ian West, for Dimitrov, described them as “foot soldiers” in the operation, acting on the instruction of others.

Dimitrov was said to have merely gone along with the more criminally-sophisticated co-accused with no great financial motivation.

Jailing Singeorzan for two years and imposing a six-month sentence on Dimitrov, Judge Christopher Prince described it as “sophisticated” and “determined” offending.

Relating to Singeorzan, Judge Prince said: “If you were a ‘foot soldier’, you have been on an awful lot of campaigns across Europe.”