QUEENS, NY — A quartet of Romanian nationals living in Queens stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from 600 unsuspecting people in an ATM “skimming” scheme, federal prosecutors said.
The five accused fraudsters were arrested Thursday on fraud and aggravated identity theft charges after a wide-ranging probe by FBI, Secret Service and NYPD investigators into crimes between May 2022 and February 2023, authorities said.
But the busts Thursday showed the crimes kept going — agents that morning effectively caught one accused fraudster red-handed with a desk full of ATM skimming device tools, according to documents.
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“The five defendants allegedly illegally obtained financial information using hidden devices implanted in ATMs to create counterfeit debit cards and steal thousands of
dollars from over 600 unsuspecting victims,” said James Smith, FBI assistant director-in-charge for New York’s field office, in a statement.
The suspects — Ioan-Anton Gherasim, 38, Elvis Dan Atomei, 34, Dan Adrian Agafitei, 25, Bobi Borcea, 49, and Razvan Vicol, 36 — hatched a scheme to install skimming devices and cameras in ATMs, prosecutors contend.
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The skimming devices — which are thin gadgets inserted in debit or credit card slots — capture and store data from cards, documents state. When coupled with PIN numbers captured by cameras, the accused fraudsters were able to make counterfeit cards, according to documents.
“The defendants then used the counterfeit cards and
corresponding PINs to ‘cash out,’ or withdraw cash and make transactions,” documents state.
Prosecutors, in a court filing, argued the five suspects should be kept behind bars until trial because of their flight risk as Romanian nationals, as well as continued ATM skimming crimes.
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One suspect — Vicol — withdrew $4,000 and tried to get $5,000 more during one cash out over seven minutes on Feb. 16 alone, documents state.
And when agents arrested Gherasim Thursday, they found a workstation or desk in his bedroom with multiple tools, “including those used to insert skimming devices into an ATM card slot and those to create and fix skimming devices and pinhole cameras,” documents state.
“These defendants have shown that they will continue their unending pursuit to steal from victims and banks,” documents state.
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