The U.S. Secret Service and state and local partners conducted an operation to combat payment card skimming and Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) fraud in several Alaska cities on August 1 and 2.
The law enforcement team, which included the Secret Service, Anchorage Police, Alaska District Attorney’s Office, U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General and Alaska State Troopers, visited 165 businesses in Anchorage, Palmer, Wasilla, Kenai, Soldotna and Seward.
They inspected ATMs, gas pumps and point-of-sale terminals for skimming devices and left behind training materials for business owners and managers.
Two skimming devices were seized during the operation. In total, more than 1,750 cash register terminals, gas pumps and ATMs were checked, the agency said.
“Over the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in credit card skimming and EBT fraud in the greater Anchorage area,” said Glen Peterson, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Seattle field office, which covers Alaska. “Our goal is to locate and remove skimming devices before people’s credit card information can fall into the hands of criminals.”
This was the first time that US intelligence conducted such a reconnaissance operation in Alaska.
EBT information and other payment card numbers can be stolen when criminals install an illegal skimming device at the point-of-sale terminal to capture card information. They then encode the stolen data on another card with a magnetic stripe, such as a gift card or hotel key. Skimming is estimated to cost consumers and financial institutions more than $1 billion each year.
Law enforcement agencies have seen a nationwide increase in skimming over the past 18 months, particularly involving EBT cards, sometimes referred to as “food stamps.” Each month, taxpayer money is deposited into government assistance accounts designed to help families pay for groceries and other basic goods. This allows criminals who steal card information to time their fraudulent withdrawals and purchases to coincide with monthly deposits from the state government, the agency said.
In 2020, a man with a Romanian passport was arrested for using credit card skimming devices in Alaska.
Marcus Rosu, an international criminal from California, was sentenced today to 30 months in prison, followed by five years of probation, for bank fraud using a credit card skimming device and was ordered to pay $57,713.53 in restitution to his known victims.
According to court documents, he became the subject of a federal investigation in February 2020 when the United States Postal Inspection Service intercepted a package containing hundreds of counterfeit bank cards containing customers’ card information. The cards were traced to more than 70 banking institutions in Southern California and some were traced to fraudulent transactions in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley. Over the course of the
During the investigation, Rosu was identified as the suspected sender of the package.
