Bulgarian man sentenced to jail for 12 years for fraud
Plamen Vanev Stanchev (40), who defrauded bank customers using high-tech skimming devices to compromise bank cards in and around Mbombela has been convicted and sentenced.
MBOMBELA – According to Hawks spokesman Capt Dineo Sekgotodi, he appeared in the Middelburg Regional Court on Thursday.
Stanchev who originates from Bulgaria, was arrested in February 2016 by the Hawks’ Serious Commercial Crime Investigation unit following investigations that successfully linked him to over six hundred counts of theft and fraud charges.
She said the investigation linked Stanchev to several Auto Teller Machines (ATM) transactions between November 2015 and February 2016 where he placed devices that enabled him to gather data from unsuspecting customers bank cards and defrauded them in the process.
The convicted Stanchev was further judged to have contravened the Immigration Act as it was established that he had been in the Republic of South Africa illegally.
The court enforced the sentence as follows; 12 years for theft, five years for contravening Regulation of Interception of Communication Act (RICA), 15 years of which five is suspended for contravening Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECT) and an additional three months for contravening the Immigration Act.
Stanchev is to serve an effective twelve years imprisonment as the sentences have been ordered to run concurrently.
