The final defendant of a major card skimming scam case has been sentenced.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced on Monday that Romanian national Bogdan Gabriel Radu will spend 15 months in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and pay $85,640 in restitution for stolen Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Upon release, he will be deported from the United States.
Radu, 23, could be seen on surveillance video at various stores throughout Mississippi placing skimmer devices on card-reading machines. Stolen data that can be traced back to the skimmer devices in Mississippi was used as far away as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. These included SNAP benefits, which provide financial assistance to low-income families for groceries.
In June 2024, the Attorney General’s Office began receiving reports about the discovery of skimmer devices at various stores in central Mississippi. These devices are slipped over credit card readers at stores we use every day and are used to steal financial information from cards swiped on them. An investigation into the crimes yielded information that ultimately located more than 15 installed skimmers throughout Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
Radu is reported to have worked alongside fellow Romanian nationals Alexandru Ionut Gheorghe, 28, and Marian Aurelian Neacsu, 29, in the scheme. It is estimated that disruption of this crime group prevented more than $37.6 million in potential fraud losses.
“This scheme reached across state lines to steal sensitive financial information using skimmer devices attached to the credit card readers we use in stores every day,” Fitch stated. “Thanks to the diligent work of our Cyber Fraud Task Force, we were able to stop all three Romanian nationals from stealing Mississippi taxpayer dollars intended for some of our State’s most vulnerable citizens.”
The following law enforcement agencies aided in the investigation into this case:
- Brandon Police Department
- Byram Police Department
- Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana Sheriff’s Office
- Clinton Police Department
- East Baton Rouge, Louisiana Sheriff’s Office
- Jackson County Sheriff’s Office
- Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Sheriff’s Office
- Laurel Police Department
- McComb Police Department
- Natchez Police Department
- Opelousas, Louisiana Police Department
- Pascagoula Police Department
- Richland Police Department
- Sulphur, Louisiana Police Department
- Tennessee Highway Patrol – Memphis District
- U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi
- United States Department of Agriculture – Office of Inspector General
- United States Secret Service
Mississippians are encouraged to guard themselves against skimmer devices accessing their card information by using tap pay or chip-read terminals and avoiding card swipes. Consumers are also urged to pay attention to the design of the card reader. Skimmer devices like the ones used by the Romanian scammers fit over the reader, making it look different and even larger than other devices, and may even pull off if lifted from the corners of the reader.
