Alexandru Vasile Badaric - How this man swindled bank customers out of tens of thousands of dollars

How this man swindled bank customers out of tens of thousands of dollars

Romanian couple Alexandru Vasile Badaric and Izabela Vintala landed in Australia with the goal of extending a criminal syndicate that had been busted by authorities in the United States.

Badaric, 34, and Vintala, 33, exited the plane at Sydney Airport in April 2023, harbouring plans to defraud Australians out of tens of thousands of dollars by installing “shimming” devices on Sydney and Melbourne ATMs.

Card shimming is the act of illegally capturing data from debit and credit card microchips by attaching a small electronic device to an ATM and allowing a counterfeit card to be made. It is different from card skimming, which involves devices collecting data from magnetic stripes and storing card PINs.

Late last month, the couple were jailed for their elaborate scam, which Badaric led.

Documents released by the NSW District Court reveal how Badaric used fake identities to open bank accounts and transfer thousands of dollars from unsuspecting ATM customers to himself, with Vintala’s help.

The facts state that in May 2023, Badaric opened bank accounts with Westpac, St George, HSBC, ANZ and NAB using a false passport with his photo and a fake name, Cestmir Bozdech. He falsely told some banks he worked as a sales manager for Audi Australia.

Between June and July, three packages purporting to be car MP5 players or display screens, but actually containing shimming devices, arrived from London to three separate addresses in Brisbane and Melbourne.

They were addressed to the fake name Vimila Isbela but linked to Vintala’s mobile number.

The couple travelled from Sydney to pick up each of the packages and returned to embark on their card-shimming spree.

CCTV footage captured Badaric installing a shimming device at the NAB ATM in World Square on three separate dates in June. He was seen removing the device on June 19.

The next month, Badaric was caught on CCTV footage installing a shimming device which Vintala handed to him at an NAB ATM in Chinatown. The next day, an NAB worker found and removed the device.

The couple also installed a shimming device at Bendigo Bank ATM in Earlwood, Melbourne, which was also found by a bank employee and later seized by police.

Between May and August, nine bank accounts in the name of Badaric or his fake identity were used to transfer money, with $22,495 in credit transactions and $22,164 in debit transactions recorded.

Most transactions followed the pattern of Badaric depositing funds into an ATM and then transferring those funds internationally to his bank accounts in Romania, the facts show.

The pair’s undoing came on August 4, 2023, when the Australian Federal police searched their home in Rhodes in Sydney’s inner west. The couple weren’t home, but were seen driving out of the property in a Kia rental car later that day.

In the rental car, police found about $13,000 in cash as well as several fraudulent driver’s licences, passports, credit cards, shimming devices and card readers.

They also discovered card-reading software on Badarc’s laptop. The court heard the $13,000 found in the car, plus about $1000 in ATM deposits and $22,000 in bank transactions were all proceeds from the card-shimming scam.

Strengthening the case against the couple was evidence from US authorities. They had arrested Romanian nationals withdrawing cash from ATMs using cloned card details, and discovered a consignment of shimming devices that were en route to Australia and linked to Badaric.

Badaric pleaded guilty to a raft of charges including possessing identification information with the intention to commit fraud, dealing with the proceeds of an indictable crime worth more than $10,000, and dishonestly obtaining or dealing in personal financial information.

He was jailed for four years and two months with a non-parole period of two years and six months. He will be eligible for parole on February 3, 2026.

Vintala pleaded guilty to possessing a thing used to obtain or deal in personal information, dealing with the proceeds of an indictable crime worth more than $10,000, dishonestly obtaining or dealing in personal financial information, and attempting to commit an offence.

She was sentenced to two years and six months’ prison, with the remainder of the term to be suspended and served in the form of a recognisance release order in the community from February 3, 2025.

Amicus: Judge Aileen Cannon must be reassigned in Trump case

“Judge Aileen Cannon should be reassigned in the federal classified documents case against former President Donald Trump if the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses and remands her decision, according to an amicus brief filed today on behalf of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, former United States district judge Nancy Gertner, New York University Law School professor emeritus Stephen Gillers and Hofstra University Law School professor James Sample by Keker, Van Nest and Peters LLP. Judge Cannon’s overwhelming appearance of bias in Trump’s favor, her disregard of existing precedent and her inability or unwillingness to avoid delay and move the case forward give the Court more than adequate grounds to reassign the case. Judge Cannon was randomly assigned to Trump’s felony classified documents case, and over the course of more than eleven months made a series of controversial decisions, ultimately dismissing the indictment by ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. 

Prior to the dismissal, Judge Cannon suggested that some White House files could be permanently withheld from criminal investigators in the Justice Department under executive privilege, inexplicably called for jury instructions favorable to Trump early in the case despite facing more immediate legal questions and stalled the case until Justice Clarence Thomas’s lone concurrence in the presidential immunity case called into question whether Smith’s appointment was legal, after which she quickly threw out the indictment on the same grounds. 

“At every possible opportunity, Judge Cannon has demonstrated her apparent bias in favor of Donald Trump,” said CREW President Noah Bookbinder. “She has at every stage made this case more difficult than the law mandated, and she then dismissed it on largely unprecedented grounds, delivering a significant win to Trump.

 Should the Court reverse her decision, it must also ensure that the case is reassigned to allow it to proceed fairly and expeditiously and to help restore the credibility of the federal court system.” In addition to her dubious legal assertions, Judge Cannon appeared to have slow-walked the case, reinforcing Trump’s well-known legal strategy of delaying court proceedings to evade accountability. 

Beyond failing to resolve numerous pretrial motions and issues, Judge Cannon did not set a new trial date despite both parties agreeing earlier that the trial could begin in the summer of 2023. If the Court reverses Judge Cannon’s decision, it would not be the first time—in fact, it would be the third time in this prosecution that it has done so.

 “Judge Cannon was presented with a historic case that will shape how, and if, the most powerful figures in government can be held accountable by the law,” said Bookbinder. “She has repeatedly failed to rise to the occasion. Given her apparent lack of impartiality, the case should not return to her.”

Read the brief
Read the motion