Three men accused of installing credit card skimmers across West Texas were arrested on San Antonio’s Northeast Side and are suspected of being part of a “large transnational organized crime group,” according to state officials.<\/p>\n
Authorities began investigating the three men in June after receiving reports of credit card skimmers at businesses in Amarillo, Abilene, Lubbock and San Angelo.<\/p>\n
Skimmers are designed to mimic legitimate PIN pads and card readers. Placed over point-of-sale terminals at locations such as\u00a0ATMs and gas stations, they capture customers’ card information, which can then be encoded onto counterfeit cards and used for fraudulent purchases.<\/p>\n
Investigators identified the men, who are Romanian citizens, after determining they frequently traveled between West Texas and San Antonio.<\/p>\n
According to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, they are believed to be part of a “large transnational organized crime group.”<\/p>\n
Authorities recovered several skimming devices when the men were arrested.<\/p>\n
Each man is charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and faces additional charges in\u00a0Bexar, Randall, Lubbock and Potter counties.<\/p>\n
Bexar County jail records show Bratu also is charged with fraud. Matei and Curea each face charges of illegal entry, unlawful use of electronic communications, fraudulent use or possession of identifying information, and unlawful interception, disclosure or use of wire, oral or electronic communications.<\/p>\n
The investigation was led by the Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center with assistance from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Criminal Investigations Division, Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n
“The economy of Texas and all of the United States is under attack from multiple transnational criminal groups looking to steal as much as they can from an open and free market society,” said Adam Colby, director of the Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three men accused of installing credit card skimmers across West Texas were arrested on San Antonio’s Northeast Side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-392240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}