Four suspects were arrested in an investigation targeting an international criminal group involved in credit card fraud, the European Police Office (Europol) said Tuesday.

The Cypriot police, with the support of Europol and authorities of the United States and Belarus, disrupted the group. Their criminal activities had affected more than 130,000 payment of card holders.

The investigation found that the credit card fraud resulted in eight million euros (8.5 million U.S. dollars) in financial losses.

The criminal network established several fake on-line shops and a shell software company in order to make illicit credit card transactions.

Due to many low-value transactions linked with Internet services, the criminals were able to operate without detection for several months, according to Europol's press release.

Steven Wilson, head of Europol's European cyber crime center noted: "The threat from cyber fraud has continued to grow and expand into a variety of sectors."

Source: Xinhua