GUILTY PLEA ENTERED IN DEBIT DATA THEFT
By Sean O’Sullivan
The News Journal
Feb 5 2009
DE
WILMINGTON — One of two co-defendants in a complicated debit-card
skimming operation that took in more than $500,000 from at least 70
victims pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington.
Artur Harutyunyan, 26, a native of Armenia who is in the United
States legally, admitted to three counts of bank fraud and one count
of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
He faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine on each of
the charges.
His co-defendant, Artur Grigoryan, is set to plead guilty to similar
charges today.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Ilana H. Eisenstein, Grigoryan
and Harutyunyan placed a skimmer device inside a keypad at Rite Aid
drugstores in Wayne, Pa., and on Marsh Road in Brandywine Hundred,
at the checkout counter, allowing it to read and store account numbers
and security passwords of anyone who used the keypad.
The two would then return, with Harutyunyan acting as a distraction,
so Grigoryan could download the stolen data or remove the device. The
pair then used the information to create fake debit cards to make
withdrawals from victims’ accounts, often at ATMs in WaWa convenience
stores.
In the Wayne, Pa., case, Eisenstein said the pair recruited a person,
identified only as A.S., to get a job at the Rite Aid and assist in the
scheme, which ran from January 2007 to April 2007. There apparently
was no inside person at the Delaware location, where information was
skimmed in January 2007.
Harutyunyan’s attorney, Michael Medway, said his client was recruited
by Grigoryan and that the two men felt pressure from Armenian gangsters
to run the illegal operation and turn the money over to them.
Harutyunyan apparently admitted to his role in the Delaware thefts
last year but that case largely remains under seal. On Wednesday,
he admitted charges in the Pennsylvania case, which will be merged
with the Delaware charges at sentencing in several months.