Suspects Captured in Stop & Shop Breach

COVENTRY, R.I. – Four California men were arrested at a Stop & Shop supermarket Monday night in connection with a broadening scheme to tamper with point-of-sale machines at check-out lines and inserting them with skimmers to steal critical credit data. The four were arrested after they attempted to replace check-out lane keypads in order to steal credit and debit card numbers and passwords, police said. The suspects were identified as Arutyun Shatarevyan, 20, Mikael Stepanian, 28, Grevork Baltadjian, 20, who were arrested inside the store, and Arman Ter-Esayan, 22, arrested in the parking lot. New England’s largest supermarket chain said credit card information was stolen in a similar manner from as many as six of its supermarkets in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In those incidents the thieves apparently switched the original keypad with an alternate keypad used to record card information. Then they switched the keypads back a few days later. Stop & Shop has responded by bolting down the keypads on their POS machines in all of its 385 stores.