Eastern European criminal gangs are believed to be committing crimes across the continent by using budget airlines to travel to different cities, carry out their offences and then return home, says European law enforcement agency Europol.
Quoted in The Times newspaper, Europol said that “petty criminals were operating across multiple jurisdictions” in Europe, carrying out crimes such as pick-pocketing and card skimming, which is the illegal copying of information from the magnetic strip of a credit or debit card. Crime analysts from the law enforcement agency, which has identified nearly 240 organised crime gangs from Romania that account for nearly 7% of all criminal networks in Europe, believe 90% of card-skimming crimes in the continent are committed by Romanian and Bulgarian groups.
The cloned cards can then be used to make purchases under someone else’s name.
Director of Europol Robert Wainwright described the situation to the newspaper as a “travelling criminal gang phenomenon”, which he said has been becoming increasingly more common in the past three years.
He revealed that gangs from various Eastern European countries such as Lithuania, Poland and Romania were operating in 20 or more European countries.
“They fly on low-cost airlines, do a few hits in one city and get back in time for tea,” Wainwright pointed out.
Europol believes that the only way that the “easyJet crime wave” can be contained is through co-operation among the authorities of the affected countries.
