MOSCOW, August 7 – RAPSI. The criminal case regarding a type of bank card extortion known as skimming, initiated under the application of Moscow-based Sberbank’s security service, has, for the first time, been classified as high-tech fraud, the bank reported on Tuesday.

Perpetrators of skimminguse a special device to copy encoded information from a bank card's magnetic strip (including the PIN code) and then clone the card. “During the court investigation, the court found the crime proved and passed an indictment regarding R. Sabitov and N. Abdullayev under the article “Illegal Access to Computer Information,” Sberbank’s message read.

Sabitov and Abdullayev were detained last October when installing unauthorized equipment on ATM’s. They were sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Specialists believe that the passing of the indictment under the article will provide a good basis for the further work of units protecting banking information.

Sberbank said that, previously, the offense of skimming had been dealt with under the article “Theft,” which allowed incriminating a specific theft but did not disclose the idiosyncrasies of this particular type of fraud as an organized activity involving the theft of personal data and the production of counterfeit cards for making numerous withdrawals of funds from the accounts of the compromised cards.