CA: How to skim thousands of cc numbers

["Dan O'Donnell" <dano () well com>]

Not exactly a report of loss, but a story about the theft and a newly 
discovered method that is well planned and well executed...

<http://www.laweekly.com/2009-06-18/news/russian-or-armenian-mob-used-quot-model-employee-quot-con-at-pch-arco/>

Russian or Armenian Mob Used "Model Employee" Con at PCH Arco
Redondo police search for the elusive "Erick" - and $300,000
By Paul Teetor
Published on June 16, 2009 at 9:14pm

An organized-crime ring that police believe is Russian or Armenian 
targeted a high-volume Redondo Beach Arco gas station, assigned a 
low-level soldier to infiltrate it and waited eight months while he 
worked himself into a position where he could implant a tiny, 
high-tech "skimmer" to steal customers' credit-card information.

Armed with a fresh batch of personal-information numbers, the gang 
began draining thousands of Southern California bank accounts soon 
after "Erick," the model employee who was by then entrusted with 
opening the station every day at 5 a.m., vanished in late April along 
with 1,500 packs of cigarettes, $1,000, a laptop, his employee 
application form - and the two digital video recorders used for 
surveillance.

Because the Arco is at a prime location at the bustling corner of 
Pacific Coast Highway and Prospect Avenue, the skimmer scam left a 
string of more than 1,000 victims, stretching from Santa Barbara to 
Newport Beach.

The "model employee" con represents an elite level of criminal 
sophistication in its planning, patience and execution, police say, 
which is now appearing in the South Bay and Los Angeles.

"This was an organized-crime ring that knew exactly what they were 
doing and very carefully lay in wait before they finally struck," 
Redondo Police Department detective Mike Strosnider, heading the 
investigation, tells L.A. Weekly. "This has been done before in other 
places around the world. . It's just never been done in our city."

The Redondo police investigation began in mid-May after a torrent of 
complaints from customers, including an undisclosed number of 
ripped-off Redondo police officers, whose bank accounts had been 
drained with a series of withdrawals of about $300 to $500. The 
victims proved to have one common denominator: They all bought gas at 
the busy Arco on PCH.

The investigation is now focused on tracking down and arresting the 
man who called himself Erick Volonski, and taking down the global 
gang that planned and executed the scam and used him as its financial 
Trojan horse.

Luckily, the detective says, the Redondo Police Department has a 
photo of Erick, who is now wanted for robbery and ATM fraud. That 
single, slightly blurred photo exists only because of an 
extraordinary piece of luck that, in hindsight, seems like a red flag 
that something about Erick was amiss.

The picture was taken in February by a photographer for an 
architectural firm, who was shooting the station in preparation for a 
major Arco makeover. When Erick realized he had been photographed, he 
instantly became agitated and rushed into the office to ask manager 
John Wartanian to have the digital photo deleted.

"I finally asked the photographer to do it, just to make Erick happy, 
and he said to tell Erick he had deleted it, but he didn't do it," 
Wartanian tells the Weekly. "So that's what I did. I told Erick it 
was deleted, even though it wasn't, and he stopped freaking out. . It 
seemed a little suspicious, but I let it go."

The station's smog-check technician, Philip Malik, said he thought 
Erick's explanation that he didn't want girlfriends seeing his 
picture on the Internet was weak but semiplausible.

"It seemed a little weird that he would be so upset about having his 
picture taken, but I didn't think anything like this could be 
happening," Malik says. "Maybe I should have realized he was into 
something criminal, but here at the station where he worked? I've 
never heard of anything like this happening . anywhere."

When the story of the skimmer scam first broke in Los Angeles media 
outlets weeks ago, it was a 48-hour sensation on TV news. But 
employees at the Arco station said the first wave of mainstream 
media, during which the station was ringed with TV satellite trucks, 
sensationalized the case and buried the fact that, so far, all the 
victims have had their stolen money, now approaching $300,000, 
reimbursed by their respective banks.

Nor did the first wave of media have time for the human-interest 
story behind the news: the betrayal of the kind of day-to-day work 
friendship that can quickly develop between employees at blue-collar, 
minimum-wage jobs, often held by young males from other countries 
with little or no family here and no fluency in English.

"I thought of Erick as a friend," says Malik. "He was a sweetheart of a guy."

Malik describes the tall, skinny Erick as a gentle, humble man who 
worked hard, asked a lot of questions but never talked about himself, 
did not appear to have a car and walked to work every day, never 
accepting a ride home and never using the station's phone.

"But there were a couple of times I found him talking on his cell 
phone, whispering on the phone," Malik says. "He said it was his 
girlfriend . that she was in the hospital."

[...]
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