Prosecutors charged a trio of suspected identity thieves each with nearly two\u00a0dozen criminal charges Monday for allegedly taking $2 million\u00a0by\u00a0using credit card skimming\u00a0technology at gas pumps.<\/p>\n
Albert Jose Gonzalez, 39, of Lancaster, Josue Gustavo Albizuras, 42, of Los Angeles, and Cesar Vasquez Echeverria, 28, of Santa Clarita\u00a0were arrested Feb. 25 after a three-year investigation\u00a0by the\u00a0L.A. County Sheriff\u2019s Department\u00a0and FBI. They face multiple\u00a0counts of conspiracy, identity theft, grand theft and computer access fraud.<\/p>\n
The suspects, who\u00a0have pleaded not guilty and are being held\u00a0in lieu of\u00a0$2 million bail each, are accused of installing sophisticated skimming devices on computerized pay pumps at gas stations to\u00a0record credit and debit card information and personal identifying numbers\u00a0from unsuspecting customers.<\/p>\n
The defendants later returned "to harvest the information" by downloading it to computers or other digital devices, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. <\/p>\n
At the time of the arrests, authorities had recovered 10,000 stolen credit and debit card numbers, as well as computers, cellphones, digital storage devices and equipment designed to make and encode credit and debit cards. They also confiscated $40,000 in cash and luxury vehicles, including a new Porsche and a Ferrari.<\/p>\n
If convicted on all counts, the men face a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in state prison.<\/p>\n
— Andrew Blankstein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prosecutors charged a trio of suspected identity thieves each with nearly two\u00a0dozen criminal charges Monday for allegedly taking $2 million\u00a0by\u00a0using credit card skimming\u00a0technology at gas pumps. Albert Jose Gonzalez, 39, of Lancaster, Josue Gustavo Albizuras, 42, of Los Angeles, and Cesar Vasquez Echeverria, 28, of Santa Clarita\u00a0were arrested Feb. 25 after a three-year investigation\u00a0by the\u00a0L.A. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5471,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5471"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}