Thread: GA-Credit cloning ring busted

090908news1joe.johnson@onlineathens.com
Credit cloning ring busted

Local and federal authorities have cracked an identity theft ring that cloned the credit cards of people in the Athens area, allowing thieves to go on an illegal multi-state shopping spree.

Warrant: Info stolen at liquor store
By Joe Johnson | joe.johnson@onlineathens.com | Story updated at noon on 9/9/2008



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Local and federal authorities have cracked an identity theft ring that cloned the credit cards of people in the Athens area, allowing thieves to go on an illegal multi-state shopping spree.

Athens-Clarke police and the U.S. Secret Service would not comment on the ongoing investigation, which started last year. So far, at least three men have been arrested, one from Winterville and others from Atlanta and North Carolina.

But according to a search warrant filed in Clarke County Superior Court, the scheme was run by Vikas Yadav from his home at 175 Sagewood Drive in Winterville, who gleaned customer credit card numbers while working at a local liquor store.

Although authorities would not say how long they believe the alleged fraud ring operated or how much was stolen, authorities apparently seized tens of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten goods when they searched Yadav's home, according to search warrants.

Yadav, an illegal immigrant, has been in federal custody since he was arrested near a Wal-Mart in New Albany, Miss., where local police found him with credit card cloning equipment and 14 re-coded credit cards, the search warrant states.

Authorities identified Yadav as a clerk at Perry's Liquor on Lexington Road, according to the warrant, but store owner Ravi Patel said in an interview Monday that Yadav did computer maintenance for the business over the past couple of years.

Patel said he didn't know that Yadav had installed a keystroke logger, a small device that crooks can use to steal financial data from computers.

"We didn't know anything about it," Patel said. "I'm just very glad they caught him, and very sad that this happened to my customers."

The investigation began in spring 2007, and last October, federal authorities intercepted a package Yadav sent to Dashun McQuiller of Jacksonville, N.C. It contained more than 20 gift cards encoded with the credit card numbers of Athens-area residents, the warrant states.

Investigators found that the numbers were assigned to credit cards used at Patel's Lexington Road liquor store, according to the warrant.

Local and federal authorities went to Yadav's home Aug. 15, and a woman who identified herself as the man's wife, Alka Pillai, allowed them to search. McQuiller was in the house at the time, with nearly a dozen credit cards, and he was taken into custody on an identity theft charge, according to the warrant.

Pillai became upset after authorities found receipts from several Wal-Mart and Best Buy stores, retail stores where cloned financial cards were used.

A judge allowed officers to continue searching the house, and they found credit-card cloning equipment, blank credit cards and dozens of new television sets, computers, video games and other electronics still in their boxes.

In the garage alone, authorities found 37 new Vizio plasma flatscreen TVs, according to the warrant.

The search warrant does not mention what Yadav did with the stolen merchandise, though one person complains in an online post that he never received Blackberry devices be bought from Yadav on eBay.

During the search, a man drove up to the Winterville house in a rental truck crammed with TVs still in their boxes, according to the search warrant. Authorities got another search warrant for the truck and seized 17 flatscreen television sets and a dozen gift cards. The truck driver, Dwight Riddick of Atlanta, previously was a suspect in Kentucky, where he allegedly used cloned cards from Yadav to buy plasma TVs.

The Clarke County judge also signed a search warrant for a safe deposit box Yadav leased at a Gaines School Road bank, and authorities found $113,000 in cash, jewelry and the title to another Winterville property, but did not find paperwork for a semi-trailer, horse and other land outside of Clarke County that authorities claim he acquired through the credit card fraud scheme.

A federal grand jury in Mississippi indicted Yadav on Aug. 20 on four counts of credit card-related fraud.

No one connected with the alleged fraud scheme has been charged in Georgia.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Tuesday, September 09, 2008





http://onlineathens.com/stories/090908/ ... 5823.shtml

Spooky! Any idea where this Yadav is from, because it sounds a little like Russian.