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Bluetooth Gas Skimming Scheme Uncovered in Utah
SALT LAKE CITY – A federal indictment unsealed Tuesday morning charges six individuals with conspiracy to steal money from customers at various gas stations in Utah and elsewhere.
The indictment alleges the defendants and their co-conspirators executed the conspiracy by using Bluetooth enabled skimming equipment that they installed on the motherboard of the internal computer that controls the gas pumps. Victims of the alleged scheme lost at least $200,000.
Charged in the indictment are Yosbel Delgado-Valdes, age 40, Iraldo Pereda-Mendez, 32, Emmanuel Nina-Perez, 28, Jandry Artigas-Reyes, 35, and Yarislani Padron-Cruz, 35, all of Salt Lake City, and Yofre Napoleon Almonte, 47, a citizen of the Dominican Republic currently being held in the Davis County Jail on unrelated charges.
The skimming equipment contains a Bluetooth card reader/recorder that records information – such as customers’ credit card numbers and the name and zip code associate with the card – from the magnetic strip of customers’ cards as the customers insert the cards into gas pumps, according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges the defendants then downloaded the digital credit card or debit card information that had been captured and stored in their skimming devices. They were then able to use the captured data to create duplicate “cloned” cards encoded with the same data as the customers’ authentic credit or debit cards.
After making the cloned cards, the defendants and their co-conspirators tested the cards by attempting small transactions – typically $1 – to identify which of the cloned cards were viable and could be used to make larger purchases.
After testing the cards, the defendants and their co-conspirators moved to what the indictment calls the “cash out” phase. The “cash out” phase generally involved large purchases of fuel, though they did make other purchases at gas stations and other retail stores.
The indictment alleges the defendants committed several overt acts. For example, on April 30, 2020, Artigas-Reyes and Pereda-Mendez visited the Tesoro gas station in Sunset, Utah, just after midnight and installed a Bluetooth skimmer in the pump. On May 21, 2020, they installed a Bluetooth skimmer in a pump at a Texaco station in Scipio.
Using the cloned credit or debit cards, the defendants obtained at least $200,000 in funds from multiple financial institutions, the indictment alleges. For instance, on May 5, 2020, Almonte made a $100 purchase at Exxon Mobil Common Cents in Bountiful using a cloned JP Morgan Chase credit card.
“Utah is a hotbed of fraud schemes. I have directed prosecutors and investigative partners to pull out all the stops to investigate and prosecute these crimes,” said a statement from a federal official.
Key Facts
- State: Utah
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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