Three Chinese men in Grand Rapids, Mich., last week each were sentenced to 102 months behind bars for skimming credit cards at area Meijer stores and stealing $285,000 from credit-union members and bank customers.
The three were arrested Jan. 11 after they were observed making fraudulent purchases at a Grand Rapids Meijer store with American Express gift cards using credit card numbers that had been stolen and re-encoded onto the magnetic stripes of used gift cards.
The accountholders in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Alabama were unaware their cards were being used. The U.S. Secret Service said the three men had 1,500 valid credit card account numbers and a mag-stripe reader/writer device, which allowed them to transfer credit card account numbers onto used plastic gift cards. They bought the numbers on the Internet and sent cash overseas via Western Union.
The fraud affected cardholders at 67 credit unions and banks.
In seeking a lower sentence, the three defendants said they face possible removal from the U.S. to China following completion of their prison sentences in the U.S.
The defendants were identified as Zhou Chen, Kang He and Shifu Lin.
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