A Romanian man who was jailed for his involvement in the theft of tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars from automated teller machines (ATMs) in 2016 was deported on Saturday evening after completing his prison sentence, the National Immigration Agency said.
Mihail Colibaba has been barred from entering Taiwan for seven years, the agency said.
Colibaba was the second of three men convicted in the ATM robberies to be released from prison.
Photo: CNA
Moldovan Niklae Penkov completed his sentence of four years and six months and was deported on Sept. 8.
Latvian Andrejs Peregudovs still has two months left to go in his sentence.
Between July 9 and 11, 2016, members of an international crime ring withdrew NT$83.27 million (US$2.88 million at the current exchange rate) from dozens of First Bank ATMs in Taipei, New Taipei City and Taichung after using malware to hack into the bank’s computing system in London.
The theft came to light when passersby alerted Taipei police after seeing two foreign men collecting large amounts of cash from ATMs in the middle of the night.
Peregudovs, Colibaba and Penkov, who were supposed to transport the money out of Taiwan, were arrested on July 17, 2016, but the other members of the gang had already fled the country.
They have not been caught.
Police recovered more than NT$77 million of the money.
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