A Romanian national has been sentenced to 24 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2,980 in restitution for swiping Los Angeles County food and assistance payments from those in need using cloned ATM cards.
Sandu Dumitrescu, 47, pleaded guilty to a single federal count of bank fraud in June. He admitted to installing skimming devices and hidden cameras at ATMs in Los Angeles to steal account numbers and personal identification numbers from inserted cards. This information was then used to clone cards and access funds.
The investigation into these fraudulent withdrawals of benefits began in August 2022 by the Los Angeles Police Department. The U.S. Secret Service joined the investigation, code-named “Operation Urban Justice,” shortly after.
According to court documents, Dumitrescu and 14 others were identified as participating in this scheme, resulting in over $5 million stolen from victims’ EBT cards. The fraud specifically targeted CalWORKs and CalFresh, programs designed to assist low-income individuals in purchasing food and meeting basic needs.
The investigation uncovered that the fraudulent withdrawals were carried out using cloned cards, which are essentially cards with encoded information from legitimate EBT cards. Some of the stolen EBT card information was obtained through skimming devices installed on ATM machines.
At the time of his arrest, Dumitrescu was found to have 17 EBT account numbers in his possession.
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