Police in Taiwan said on Sunday they had arrested three out of 16 foreign suspects they believe hacked into the cash machines of a major local bank, withdrawing more than $2 million.
They are accused of targeting First Bank’s ATMs last week, using malware to withdraw more than T$80 million ($2.5 million) from dozens of machines.
A policeman recognized one of the suspects, a Latvian, while he was eating in a restaurant in the northeastern city of Yilan.
Police arrested him later, an official of the Taipei City Police Department told a news briefing.
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Two other suspects, who are from Romania, were arrested in Taipei, police said, adding they had found more than T$50 million of the stolen money in a hotel room.
“This is the first time that an international team of ATM thieves has committed a crime in Taiwan,” Lee Wen-chang, chief commander of the Criminal Investigation Division, told reporters.
Authorities are still investigating exactly how the crime was carried out, he said.
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The remaining 13 suspects, including two from Russia, have left Taiwan, police said, adding they had alerted authorities overseas.
The suspects may have used a cellphone to target 41 First Bank ATMs, investigators said on Wednesday.
In May, a gang stole $13 million from Japanese ATMs in a three-hour spree.
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Since discovering the Taiwan theft last Monday, Taiwan’s major state-run banks have frozen withdrawals from nearly 1,000 ATMs of the kind targeted in the heist, which are supplied by Germany’s Wincor Nixdorf.
About 4% of Taiwan’s national ATM network of 27,200 machines are affected.
Investigators have identified three different malware programs that were used to trigger withdrawals.
