A person believed to have been part of a Romanian legal group was sentenced to 10 years in jail final week after he stole tens of 1000’s of welfare playing cards throughout California and New York.
Catalin-Marius Graur, 43, was sentenced Aug. 4 after pleading responsible in October 2024 to at least one depend of financial institution fraud. When he was arrested at a New York Metropolis Airbnb residence in June 2024, he had over $37,000 in money and practically 1,500 stolen account entry numbers in his possession, in accordance with a press release from the Division of Justice.
In his scheme, officers stated Graur focused these receiving Digital Profit Switch funds, that are distributed by social providers departments to assist low-income communities obtain meals and money support. In California, these are accessed by way of packages like CalFresh — beforehand often called meals stamps — and CalWORKS.
Based on DOJ officers, Graur would steal EBT card info by attaching “refined skimming units” to ATMs and different gross sales machines throughout Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. As soon as the sufferer entered their card, the gadget captured their info. Fraudulent playing cards might be made with the stolen info and used to withdraw EBT funds.
Graur was not dwelling in the US legally, in accordance with officers. A Romanian citizen, he entered the U.S. in 2020 on a vacationer visa however overstayed his go to, the discharge stated. He labored with a number of individuals internationally within the scheme, with one confederate receiving greater than 36,000 stolen EBT card numbers from Graur over the course of three years, the assertion stated. One other co-conspirator concerned within the scheme, Mihai-Adrian Humoiu, was sentenced to over seven years in jail in Might, in accordance with the FBI.
Based on the Los Angeles division of the FBI, which investigated Graur’s case, there are a number of cases of Romanian residents coming to the U.S. to commit financial institution fraud. The company has investigated that crime route particularly for a few years.
In 2023, The Occasions reported on a string of Romanian residents who had been arrested for skimming EBT funds by way of ATMs, together with Virgil Negru, a member of the Eforie Metropolis Council, who was charged with felony forgery and identification theft.
As a result of the method of skimming is sophisticated and requires a lot of completely different steps, the crimes are sometimes organized and carried out in teams. It’s a criminal offense of alternative, they stated, and scammers journey wherever they assume they might discover success — it’s not unique to California or Romania.
In contrast to fashionable debit or bank cards, EBT playing cards historically haven’t had microchips, making them particularly simple to clone. However that modified in California in April, when the state rolled out new playing cards with microchips, stated Gerry Bonilla, the division chief for program compliance within the state’s Social Companies Division. Clients with the brand new playing cards can use the faucet perform for transaction in any respect companies with the function obtainable on their gross sales machines.
Since issuing the brand new playing cards, Bonilla stated that the division has acquired fewer studies of EBT scamming. These days, many of the studies his workplace receives of EBT card scamming come from shops with out microchip readers on their level of sale machines.
The Occasions additionally reported that wait instances for EBT fund reimbursement after reporting a rip-off may take weeks, as companies turned overwhelmed with requests. In California, this course of has quickened in recent times, with the method now being practically “instantaneous,” Bonilla stated. Clients should file a profit reimbursement declare inside 90 days beginning on the day of the theft. The state requires that declare to be processed inside 10 days, however Bonilla stated it typically solely takes one or two days, relying on the circumstances of the theft.
CalFresh has extra necessities for reimbursement. Clients can’t be reimbursed twice in a single Federal Fiscal Yr and the quantity “can not exceed the equal of two months’ value of their month-to-month allotment per occurence,” Bonilla stated in an e mail.
Individually, one other individual, additionally from Romania, plead responsible to financial institution fraud and asylum fraud in San Francisco for a similar sort of rip-off with EBT playing cards, in accordance with one other DOJ assertion. Marius Marian, 39, illegally accessed over $500,000 in EBT funds by way of attaching skimming units to ATMs. Marian is a Romanian citizen who illegally entered the U.S. after which was deported in 2019 after serving eight months in custody for financial institution fraud. In an utility for asylum, submitted to the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety round April 2023, he knowingly didn’t disclose his earlier deportation, the assertion stated. His sentencing is scheduled for October.
