ELIO ARTURO RODRIGUEZ-MENDEZ of Miami, Florida, and JEAN JESUS RODRIGUEZ-SILVA of Louisville, Kentucky, both pleaded guilty on May 10, 2018, to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Each was sentenced by United States District Judge William L. Osteen, Jr., to 33 months of imprisonment, followed by 3 years of supervised release. They were also ordered to pay $21,931.09 in restitution. Authorities began investigating the fraud following a fraud victim’s complaint. By tracing the use of the stolen card information, the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office identified two men on store security footage at various Walmart stores associated with purchases using that victim’s card and other cards. That surveillance also showed the two men consistently arrived and left the stores in a silver pick-up truck with Florida license plates. On September 7, 2017, an officer saw a pick-up truck matching that description and followed it to a hotel in Salisbury. The officer recognized one of the persons in the vehicle as a person seen on surveillance video associated with the credit/debit card fraud. Officers stopped the pick-up truck after it left the hotel. The driver was RODRIGUEZ-MENDEZ, 47, with passenger RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, 33. The pair was found to possess devices commonly found in card-skimming activity conducted at gas pumps. Most of the victims had patronized stations in Rockwell and Salisbury. A GPS unit in RODRIGUEZ-MENDEZ’S truck showed it had once stopped at the station in Rockwell while the station was closed, and an audio-recording recovered from the GPS unit captured persons apparently discussing, in Spanish, the proper way to install a gas pump card-skimming device.
This case was investigated by the United States Secret Service and the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office, and prosecuted by Assistant United States Anand P. Ramaswamy, Cybercrime Prosecutor for the Middle District of North Carolina.
-- Middle District of North Carolina