Crime, Financial Services, Latvia

She said that some 2,000 payment cards might be affected in the data theft. The payment card data have been stolen from clients of 12 Latvian banks, but for some of these banks the number of affected payment cards is very small.

In Brivule-Jansone’s words, the payment card data have been stolen, using ATMs in the Baltics.

"In the payment car industry, attempts are made from time to time to copy payment card data to access money in bank accounts, and time and again, criminals succeed in copying these data by attaching fake keyboards or reading devices to ATMs," Brivule-Jansone said, urging people to report on any ATMs that look unusual.

"Each bank has its own strategy for reducing the risks," Brivule-Jansone said, explaining that some banks choose to block the cards from which the data have been stolen to protect their clients from unpleasant surprises.

Mara Mikelsone, a representative of DNB Banka, confirmed that the bank has been alerted to cases where cards of the bank’s clients have been used in devices enabling data theft, and that the bank has blocked these cards.

"The cards are blocked as a prevention, to completely exclude the risk of the stolen cards being be used to cause financial losses to our clients. This is the industry’s standard practice. The cards are replaced free of charge," the DNB Banka representative said.

At the end of June 19 banks were issuing payment cards in Latvia.