Two Romanian nationals were indicted by a federal grand jury this week on charges of using counterfeit ATM cards to withdraw more than $14,000 from local banks.

Vasile Ciocan, 29, and Romulus Pasca, 36, who live in Canada, were found with 20 counterfeit cards on them when they were first arrested by Monroeville police on April 13, authorities said.

They were arrested after a passer-by noticed them acting suspiciously at an ATM.

The counterfeit bank cards were made after other people involved in the conspiracy placed card readers on at least two ATMs in Macon, Ga., and Tysons Corner, Va., said U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan.

Card readers, which can be purchased easily, record the information that's encoded in the magnetic stripe on the back of a bank card.

The information can then be transferred to any card with a magnetic stripe -- even a hotel key card, said Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor Adrian Perrig.

In this case, the devices were modified to become a false front on the ATMs, Ms. Buchanan said.

In addition, she said, the culprits placed a small camera on the front to record the customer's personal identification number as it was being punched in.

Ms. Buchanan was unsure how many customers' information was taken in the scam. The account numbers were then transferred to new, counterfeit credit cards that Mr. Ciocan and Mr. Pasca used, she said.

Mr. Ciocan also has been named but not charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of Ohio.

According to paperwork filed in that case, account numbers were taken from customers of KeyBank and Fifth Third Bank.

In November, Mr. Ciocan and another man, Petru Adrian Vascan, were seen placing skimming devices on bank ATMs in Sylvania, Ohio. They were then seen in security video several days later withdrawing money using the compromised account numbers, court papers said.

Mr. Vascan was identified on surveillance cameras through his Michigan's driver's license. Mr. Ciocan was identified through the license plate on his rental car.

According to the criminal complaint and the Toronto Police Department, Mr. Ciocan has ties to organized crime in Romania.

Mr. Vascan is charged with access device fraud.

There was nearly $50,000 lost in the Ohio case.

ATM skimming is not new in this country. It has been around since at least the late 1990s, said Kurt Helwig, the president and CEO of the Electronic Funds Transfer Association.

The most extreme case, Mr. Helwig said, was in New York in 2000.

Members of an Eastern European organized crime ring placed a number of card readers at ATMs around New York, taking information from several hundred account holders, Mr. Helwig said.

In all, $3 million to $5 million was lost.

"These crooks, they sunk some money into this," Mr. Helwig said. "They spent considerable time and effort."

But, he continued, the amount of money lost through these types of scams is minuscule compared to how much cash is dispensed through ATMs each year.

There are about 400,000 ATMs in the United States, which dispense $1 trillion annually.

Of that, Mr. Helwig said, about $50 million each year is lost to fraud. When a customer's bank information is compromised, it is the institution's responsibility to refund the money.

Even with the recent cases, Mr. Helwig does not believe the crime is expanding, and when it does occur, it is often caught quickly.

The New York case, Mr. Helwig said, was a wake-up call to the industry. Since then, technology has advanced, and software and hardware have become more tamper-resistant.

In one of the most unsophisticated instances of ATM skimming, a person in Florida wrote on a piece of notebook paper taped to the machine, "Don't use this card reader, use this one," and had an arrow pointed to a card reader slapped onto the front, Mr. Helwig said.

Some customers fell for it.