Someone was hoping to digitally drain the accounts of commuters before they knew what had happened.
The authorities issued a warning for customers to check for unauthorized activity on their credit and debit cards and then they waited, hoping the thieves would return.
On Monday night, a husband and wife entered the L.I.R.R. station in Sea Cliff, looking to retrieve the camera and other equipment, the authorities said. But Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officers were waiting.
The couple was arrested, as were two men at an apartment in Elmhurst, Queens, who were believed to be the technicians and managers of the operation.
A statement by the Nassau County district attorney’s office described the apartment as a virtual factory. In addition to finding cameras, skimmers, memory cards and credit cards, the statement said, “Two of the flash drives containing account numbers were found in a toilet.”
It was unclear how much money was stolen. At least one bank has reported thousands of dollars of losses on more than 50 accounts, the authorities said.
The police identified the couple as Valer Zaharia, 38, and Teodora Zaharia, 27. The others were identified as Niculae Petre, 45, and Dorin Husa, 37. All four are Romanian citizens, the authorities said. They were charged with identity theft, along with several other crimes, and could each face up to seven years in prison.
The cameras were hidden inside black metal strips and mounted above the keypad, allowing the thieves to monitor PIN codes.
The crew also placed “plastic skimmers” over the bank card slots to capture information from their magnetic strips so they could create a new card to steal from a bank account.
Kathleen M. Rice, the district attorney, lamented that the ticket machines, popular among commuters, had “become a source of convenience and opportunity for a crew of brazen thieves.”
Railroad officials said all 278 ticket vending machines had been checked to make sure there were no other cameras.
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=16755
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
No comments:
Post a Comment