Ringleader of Romanian ATM ‘skimming’ operation gets 6 years for scamming low-income victims

A Romanian man has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for running an ATM skimming crew aimed at using electronic surveillance methods to steal bank information from low-income victims – a problem that is growing across the country, the Department of Justice announced this week.

The ringleader, Marius Oprea, 38, secretly installed “skimming” devices, including pinhole cameras and card readers on ATMs in California, according to a federal criminal complaint. The ring used the skimming technology to clone debit cards of participants in anti-poverty programs to steal unemployment benefits from needy people, prosecutors said.

ATM skimming is when criminals put a hidden electronic device on an ATM card reader. The reader then scoops information from a bank card’s magnetic strip whenever a customer uses the machine, according to the FBI.

recent months, including Alabama, California, Nevada and Florida. Data analytics firm FICO tracked a sharp rise in skimming scams across the nation in 2023, with a 96% jump in compromised debit cards, and the FBI estimates skimming costs financial institutions and consumers more than $1 billion each year.

The case of the Romanian national, who pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in a federal court in California, is the latest to use growingly sophisticated methods to dupe unsuspecting people out of their vital bank information at ATM machines. Many of those charged in the crimes come from overseas, federal prosecutors said.

“Skimming activity is very much increasing,” Andrew Brown, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case, told USA TODAY. “It is extremely profitable, and the perpetrators are hard to catch because they typically enter the U.S. illegally and live under assumed names with counterfeit IDs.”