Journal Inquirer, CT
March 3 2007
Gear for credit-card scam found in Manchester hotel
By: Harlan Levy, Journal Inquirer
03/03/2007
Credit-card equipment that Manchester police seized Wednesday from a
mall-area hotel room links four California men with the February
theft of more than $115,000 from customers of three Rhode Island Stop
& Shop supermarkets, according to Manchester police and federal court
records.
Coventry, R.I., police arrested the four on Tuesday and reported to
Manchester police that they had found a key from the Courtyard by
Marriott hotel on Slater Street.
"They were registered and had rented two rooms from Tuesday through
next Monday," Manchester Police Detective Sgt. Christopher Davis
said. "We found their whole operation set up in one of the hotel
rooms."
The gear consisted of everything the men needed to create and read
the phony number pads they are suspected of having installed in the
supermarkets during a trip last month. Davis said police found a
laptop computer hooked to a credit card "skimmer," which reads debit
and credit-card information, electrical wire, circuit boards, a
soldering iron, and electrical tape.
The four men flew from Los Angeles to Bradley International Airport
in Windsor Locks on Monday and rented a large sport-utility vehicle
on Tuesday, according to an affidavit by U.S. Secret Service agent
Craig Marech, which was quoted by the Providence Journal.
Authorities suspect the men – Michael Stepanian, Arman Ter-Esayan,
Gevork Baltadjian, and Arutyun Shatarevyan – have ties to an Armenian
organized crime ring in Los Angeles, the Providence newspaper
reported.
The men drove from Connecticut to Coventry, R.I., where they were
caught retrieving the phony credit- and debit-card number pads they
had installed at check-out counters, possibly in early February, the
paper reported.
"They would go in at maybe 5 or 6 a.m., when there was minimal
staffing, and they’d swap out the PIN pads and replace them with
fraudulent ones that would record all of the credit card and
PIN-number information," Davis said. PIN stands for "personal
identification number."
"Then they’d go back several days later and put the correct ones
back," the sergeant continued. "They brought that information back to
California, where they created counterfeit debit cards, and then they
would go to ATMs and withdraw money."
ATMs are the automated teller machines found at banks and elsewhere.
Videotape evidence connects the men and others to account thefts at
Stop & Shop stores in Providence, Cranston, and Coventry, R.I., and
to ATM withdrawals made in California, according to a complaint filed
in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island.
Authorities are also investigating whether the four men may be linked
to similar scams in Las Vegas, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and
Richmond, Va., according to the Providence Journal.
Glendale, Calif., police Sgt. Steve Davey, who heads the Eurasian
Organized Crime Task Force, said that the Glendale police have twice
arrested Stepanian on identity-theft charges, in 2004 and 1997. He
said that Stepanian "definitely" has ties to Armenian organized
crime, the Providence paper reported.
Davey also said greater Los Angeles area Armenian, Russian, Hispanic,
and Asian criminal groups are "very sophisticated and can change a
pay-point machine" within minutes.
"They are killing us out here with these," he said.
Davey said that the suspects probably figured it would be easier to
run the scam in Rhode Island.
"I’m glad that Providence was able to get them," he said.
The men face up to five years in prison on one of the charges they
are facing and a mandatory two-year sentence on a second charge. They
are scheduled to return to federal court in Rhode Island for a
hearing Tuesday.