Two Romanians have been jailed in the UK for stealing almost EUR 1.9 million from cash machines across the country by infecting them with a sophisticated computer virus, reports Daily Mail.

Emanual Leahu, 30, was jailed for four years and ten months, while Gheorghe Mirzac, 32, was sentenced to two years and ten months.

The two Romanian citizens were members of an Eastern European gang who raided 51 ATMs on the May Bank Holiday weekend in 2014. They gained access to the cash machines by infecting them with malware. Then, once they’d got into the operating system, they were able to empty its contents, 40 notes at a time.

Leahu was arrested by City of London Police officers in Bacau, Romania, last September and extradited to the UK. Mirzac was arrested by the French police in Cannes in January this year on a European arrest warrant. He was extradited to the UK in February.

Two other gang members were previously jailed for involvement in the same case, reports Daily Mail. Teofil Bortos, 37, was jailed for seven years in January 2016, while Grigore Paladi, 40, was sentenced to five years imprisonment in 2015.

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Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com