A Las Vegas man faces federal charges in connection with producing and using counterfeit credit and debit cards that allegedly were encoded with information skimmed from gas pumps.
Zelalem Berhe, 41, is charged with five counts of bank fraud, possession of at least 15 counterfeit access devices, possession of access device-making equipment and aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Nevada.
Between April 2009 and May 2010, Berhe and others who are not named allegedly installed devices used to steal magnetic information from credit and debit cards at gas pumps in the Las Vegas area, and in Florida and Arizona.
Berhe and others allegedly skimmed about 13,800 credit and debit card account numbers by using computers, encoders and software programs to transfer the credit and debit card information to counterfeit credit and debit cards through a process called re-encoding. A re-encode occurs when someone uses a real credit card and erases the magnetic information on the magnetic stripe to replace it with the stolen information.
Berhe and others allegedly unlawfully used the stolen account numbers to fraudulently obtain approximately $591,872 from more than 10 financial institutions, officials said. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine on each bank fraud count, up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each access device count and a minimum of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft.
