A key figure in an organised crime network today admitted plotting a hi-tech scam that netted £1.6 million from high street cash machines across Britain in a single weekend.

Romanian national Teofil Bortos, of Newham, was part of an eastern European gang that inserted “malware” into ATMs to steal cash.

He was seized at Luton airport in the summer and today pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to conspiracy to defraud.

The gang was able to attack 51 ATMs in a single weekend over the spring bank holiday last year.

The machines were in public places in cities and towns including London, Brighton, Portsmouth, Blackpool, Doncaster, Liverpool and Sheffield.

Each was physically broken into and infected with malware, programs that can attack computers, before large amounts of cash were withdrawn.

Detectives believe that the malware subsequently deleted itself, making it difficult to identify the cause of the attacks.

However, they are confident that the way in which the attacks were mounted meant customer data was not compromised.

Bortos, 36, today entered his guilty plea before Judge Nicholas Cooke, QC, via a videolink from prison. A second charge of conspiracy to steal in May was dropped. Sentencing was adjourned until the New Year.

It is understood that police believe Bortos held a trusted position in the gang carrying out the sophisticated scam.

He was trapped by the use of a combination of car number plate recognition technology and mobile phone cell site evidence.

This evidence placed him at the scene of dozens of ATMs, many of which were stripped of cash.

Bortos was arrested by officers from the London Regional Fraud Team, based at the City of London Police HQ and a part of the London Regional Organised Crime Unit established by the Home Office.

It was set up to target organised crime gangs committing fraud in and around the capital.

The LRFT is made up of detectives from the British Transport Police, the City of London Police and the Met.

In February another member of the gang, George Paladi, was jailed for five years by Southwark crown court after admitting his part in the conspiracy to steal the money and physically stealing £554,860 from 15 cash machines.

Paladi was arrested at his home on Old Commercial Road in Portsmouth, in October 2014 following an investigation by detectives from the British Transport Police, the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police.

Matthew Radstone, defending, said that Paladi’s guilty plea had been entered on the grounds of a formal basis of plea document submitted to prosecutors.

Judge Cooke told the court he took the provisional view that the start- ing point for the sentence, coming before mitigation and reduction for the guilty plea, would be eight years’ imprisonment.

He adjourned sentence till January 11 pending more information on Paladi’s sentence. The case continues.