A BULGARIAN national appeared in court for the first time to deny installing card skimming devices on ATMs in Bahrain.
The 42-year-old man and his friend, who is still at large, allegedly fixed the devices onto machines belonging to Ithmaar Bank and HSBC in Manama, just one day after arriving in the country on November 21 last year.
They left Bahrain a few days later, but the 42-year-old was arrested at Bahrain International Airport on December 14 on his return to the country.
Both have gone on trial at the High Criminal Court for fraud, sabotage, creating a digital signature for a fraudulent purpose and possessing a tool for that purpose.
“Your honour, I did not commit any crimes,” said the 42-year-old yesterday via a court translator.
“I have visited Bahrain several times and on November 21 I visited with my friend and he said he wanted to withdraw cash from an ATM machine.
“However, after his card failed to work I went into the ATM booth and attempted to withdraw cash for him.
“We went to three different ATM machines and none of them worked.
“I then saw he had a screw driver in his hand and he told me that he was committing a crime.
“I did not know anything about this and was shocked.”
However, a cyber crime specialist told prosecutors that the 42-year-old defendant had computer programs in his possession that were used to create forged credit cards.
“I examined his laptop and found a program that fraudsters use to copy details of stolen credit cards and copy them onto new ones,” said the official from the Anti-Corruption, Economic and Electronic Security Directorate.
“This program allows you to assign new passwords and uncover details of credit cards.
“In addition, I found a Skype conversation between the user of the laptop and another person about stolen credit cards and their passwords.”
Prosecutors claim the defendant returned to Bahrain to help two other Bulgarian nationals carry out a similar crime.
The trial was adjourned to September 11 for review.
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