Two Romanian men have been arrested and charged over alleged credit card "skimming", Auckland police said today.
Alexandru Tudor, 24, and Marcel Cismas, 35, were arrested in a central city motel last week and charged with dishonestly using a document.
They appeared in Auckland District Court and were remanded in custody to reappear next Monday.
Detective Sergeant Paul Newman, head of the Auckland Central general fraud squad, said further charges were likely.
The offences were alleged to have occurred in Orewa, north of Auckland, and in Rotorua during December and last month.
Mr Newman praised the work of members of the public and bank staff in identifying covert devices placed on automatic teller machines (ATMs).
The devices were designed to capture card and user details from unsuspecting customers, he said.
"Police were alerted and inquiries led them to a central city motel room where the two defendants were preparing to leave the country," he said.
"A number of items linking the defendants to the alleged offending were also located."
Mr Newman declined to say which banks had been hit in the incidents.
He said "skimming" was an international crime trend and involved attaching card reading devices to ATMs, usually to card reading slots, and having a hidden camera aimed at the key pad.
Unsuspecting customers using those machines had their card details captured by the card reading device and their personal identification number (pin) recorded by the camera.
Devices placed on machines were often sophisticated and difficult to detect although many ATMs in New Zealand had anti-skimming equipment built into them.
Mr Newman said people using ATMs should follow the directions on the machine, avoid forcing cards into card slots and take care not to disclose their pin.
He said members of the public should report any suspicious activity around ATMs or any suspicious items attached to ATMs to bank staff or police.
In December, two other Romanians, Jan Marius Scutariu and Andrei Iustin Raileanu, were deported after being convicted of stealing nearly $35,000 with cloned credit cards.
They had glued a skimming device to a Westpac ATM in Hamilton.
