Thread: More than 200 fake credit cards seized

More than 200 fake credit cards seized

By Guillermo Contreras
Updated 05:26 p.m., Monday, March 26, 2012

They were dressed like any tourist and shopped some high-end stores on San Antonio's Northwest Side, buying iPods, iPhones, computers and designer clothes, among other luxuries, according to authorities.

But unlike most consumers, federal investigators say, a trio from Mexico's capital had more than 200 credit cards — all of them fake — that they had mailed to themselves here before they left home to use on shopping sprees.

Agents with a U.S. Secret Service-led task force arrested the suspects — Aristides Otero, Carlos Acosta and Edgar Corona — after learning they had shopped at stores at The Rim and at The Shops at La Cantera. Court records show they'd been here a few times before, making similar weekend trips for products they could sell back home.

The men were indicted last week on credit-card fraud charges carrying penalties of up to 20 years in federal prison. They are being held in a federal jail, pending arraignment next week.

Investigators have yet to tally the total loss value, but estimates of a handful of the electronics seized exceed $5,000.

“We were able to follow them around on a shopping spree,” said Jacquelyn Carter, special agent in charge of the Secret Service in San Antonio. “They went to La Cantera, some pretty nice stores. They had iPhones, computers and designer clothing.”

The iPhones usually sell for about $200 with a two-year cell phone contract, but the suspects bought them sans contract at $800 each, using the fake credit cards that bore the suspects' actual names, according to prosecutors.

“It's not a new scheme. People get caught at the border with cards, but not this many on such a large scale,” Carter said. “This is the first time in a while that we've seen anything like this here.”

The case came to a head last month when agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection helped by the South Texas Regional Task Force, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations and San Antonio police, tracked packages that had been delivered to San Antonio from Mexico, with Otero and Acosta as the recipients.

Besides Apple stores, Otero, Acosta and Corona had used the cards — or tried to — at Best Buy and Target, among others, agents said.

They found Otero had 99 fake credit cards, Acosta possessed 52, and Corona had 56, according to the indictment. A criminal complaint affidavit said Acosta admitted he had made four trips to make fraudulent credit card purchases, Otero admitted he had traveled to San Diego, Calif., twice and to San Antonio three times for faux-card sprees. Corona claimed it was his first trip to the U.S.

The men told investigators they bought the fake cards in Mexico. Carter said whoever made the cards encoded them with stolen numbers, some of which were still usable.

“The quality was not that great,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ray Gattinella. “The reason they had so many of them is sometimes they wouldn't work. They'd (try) two or three. If they didn't work, they'd move on.”

The Express-News contacted some of the businesses for comment Monday, but they either declined or did not return calls.

gcontreras@express-news.net

More than 200 fake credit cards seized - San Antonio Express-News

Groups out of Mexico accused in sprees with fake plastic

By Guillermo Contreras


Wednesday, May 30, 2012


International crooks have apparently taken the credit card advertising slogan, “It's everywhere you want to be,” to new heights.

For the third time this year, authorities have arrested a group of foreigners accused of obtaining several fake credit cards to go on shopping sprees in San Antonio, Houston and West Texas.

The arrests of Cesar Arizmendiz Vilchis and Alejandra Zavala Sanchez come as three others pleaded guilty to federal charges of credit card fraud in San Antonio and as a third group was arrested in El Paso with nearly 400 cards.

All three groups are from Mexico and flew or drove to Texas for their alleged crimes, spawning investigations that stretch across two countries.
The three groups are not suspected of being tied to each other but do have similarities: All were after clothing, electronics and reloadable gift cards.

“We're finding this is kind of a semi-organized deal,” said Jacque Carter, special agent in charge of the Secret Service in San Antonio. “They come up here with specific instructions on what to buy and who to meet here.”
Given the three cases, Carter said it appears to be a trend, and her agency has passed on information about the groups to its agents in Mexico City “so they can coordinate with the authorities” there.

The groups resemble operations of “organized retail crime” — large-scale retail theft and fraud by groups of professional shoplifters called “boosters,” according to a report on organized crime by the Congressional Research Service.

“The organized crime rings resell illegally acquired merchandise in a variety of fencing operations such as flea markets, swap meets, pawn shops and more recently, online marketplaces,” states the CRS report, from Jan. 6.

In the three cases, the suspects told authorities they were to sell the items once they returned to Mexico at flea markets or their small retail shops.

Some had already made trial runs.

Arizmendiz and Zavala, for instance, told agents they got their 72 cards from a man at a bar in Mexico City and that they were going to split with him the merchandise or its profits, court records said.

They also had used five cards in a previous shopping spree at the outlet stores in San Marcos. They had returned, court records said, to buy more merchandise at the San Marcos stores and an outlet near Houston when agents arrested them May 15 at San Antonio International Airport.

In a case in March, Aristides Otero, Carlos Acosta and Edgar Corona had more than 200 fake cards that they had mailed to themselves from Mexico to an overnight-delivery business in San Antonio. They claimed to have gotten the cards in Mexico City and gone on a shopping spree at high-end stores in San Antonio for items that included iPads, iPhones and trendy fashions.

Court records said Acosta, 35, admitted he had made four trips to the United States to make fraudulent credit card purchases. Otero, 34, admitted he had traveled to San Diego, Calif., twice and to San Antonio three times for faux-card sprees. Corona, 36, claimed it was his first trip to the U.S.

All three pleaded guilty May 18 to access-device fraud charges and agreed their fraud was between $10,000 and $30,000.

The El Paso group included Mario Kanakoqui-Isordia and his common-law wife, Zaira Paula Medina-Madriles, residents of Chihuahua City, Mexico, who were arrested May 8 while driving across the border from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, into Santa Teresa, N.M., just west of El Paso. They had 363 counterfeit credit and debit cards, seven fake Mexican driver's licenses, 41 gift cards and two fraudulent I-94 immigration records.

Kanakoqui-Isordia claimed he was forced to buy items in the U.S. to help pay off a debt to a drug gang in Mexico, while Medina-Madriles refused to answer questions without a lawyer, records show.

A Kanakoqui-Isordia relative who is also a law student was found shot dead in 2009 in Mexico's Chihuahua state, with one of his two severed hands recovered near an ATM, Mexican media reported. A poster board left behind warned other credit card “cloners” that they would meet the same fate.

Authorities say organized groups, usually in Eastern Europe, sell off credit card numbers and other personal information taken through hacking attacks or with machines called “skimmers” that surreptitiously store the information when cards are used to pay for items at points of purchase worldwide.

Cards are then custom-made usually with a variation of the user's name and the stolen numbers, officials said, but the cards might appear shoddy, with fuzzy markings or other things that should raise red flags.

“It's something certainly for our merchants to be aware of,” the Secret Services' Carter said. “Much like with counterfeit money, they need to pay attention to the cards' security features. They need to ask for zip code, and physically look at the card, whatever is coming on the encoded swipe matches what's on the front.”

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