WAITING to use a city centre cash machine, these two friends, right, look like hundreds of other shoppers in Oxford.

But an eagle-eyed CCTV operator was right to be suspicious, for the pair were in fact professional criminals holding a card-cloning device described as one of the most advanced to have been used in the city.

Repeat offenders Marin Popa and Ioan Paul were jailed at Oxford Crown Court after being caught with a mobile device capable of transferring bank details on to any card with a magnetic strip.

The pair, who were found with £510 in cash, were spotted visiting a number of ATMs on November 2.

In their possession was a phone top-up card and another card designed to fool cash machines into thinking they were bank cards – loaded with the account details of people in South Africa and Ukraine.

Giving evidence, Pc Steve Higa said: “We have had a lot of problems with people withdrawing cash fraudulently.

“It’s very difficult to trace.”

Pc Higa said the device found on Popa and Paul was “unique and very advanced”.

The court heard the duo’s equipment was not the kind usually fitted to cash machines to take people’s details, but was instead a mobile device used to load bank account information on to any plastic card with a magnetic strip.

Pc Higa said criminals traded account details using USB devices containing information obtained originally from someone work for a bank.

Popa and Paul were found with an Argos gift card, an Oyster card, a Health Lottery card, phone top-up cards and a Pizza Express card.

Pc Higa said: “Generally we find skimming devices in the machine and they’re very well crafted, you wouldn’t notice them.

“It’s very rare we find a device (like this one) on a person.”

The Romanian defendants, from Perivale, Middlesex, admitted possessing articles for use in fraud.

Both have two previous convictions for identical offences.

Popa, 23, was jailed for two years.

Paul, 19, was given a 15-month term in a young offenders’ institution.

Recorder Antonio Bueno said: “Offences of this kind are becoming very prevalent and cause enormous damage to the business and commercial community of this country.

“This is cheating of a very low order and at the end of the day the costs involved in frauds of this kind – wrongful abstractions of monies from cashpoints and by the fraudulent use of credit and bank cards – is passed on to the community at large.”

“But for the vigilance of the operator observing your actions on the CCTV located at various points throughout the city centre I have very little doubt as to the ways in which this equipment would have been used.

“You have become what I regard as professional criminals.”

Both men will be considered for deportation.