December 23, 2008
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News: From Russia with Love (for your money).
Three of four Russian immigrants are already contained in Atlanta. The credit card fraud ring was operating in the Alpharetta community, north of the Atlanta-proper from a BP station. Ring member and immigrant Karen Khalatyon (male, not yet captured) had secured employment at the local convenience store and is charged with stealing vital credit card info from over a hundred customers. This credit card ring has been under investigation for two months now and Alpharetta police have gathered photographs of suspicious activities involving the ring within the metro-Atlanta communities since that time.
What they have found is, through ATMs and store purchases, ring members have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from innocent victims' debit and credit cards. Upon raiding an apartment in Alpharetta, the police found documents containing victims' credit card numbers, complete with PID numbers. Bank statements were found for the criminals' deposits of tens of thousands of dollars. Hundreds of bogus credit cards were found. Of particular interest was the finding of ‘skimmers' and remote camera devices. ‘Skimmers' are devices placed over the faceplate of a real scanner undetected. They scan the debit or credit card information at the same time the real scanner does. Of course, the remote cameras were cleverly hidden in a position where they could record keypad activity.
These ‘skimmer reading devices' were used at local ATMs to collect ‘swipe information' while a hidden camera would record the physical keystrokes for the PINs. Fugitive Khalatyon, is accused of substituting the BP store's original credit card scanner with a fake one, used to collect data. The readers made an easy upload for reproducing fake debit and credit cards that would be used all over northern metro-Atlanta.
Authorities have assessed that these men (at least four are known) were expert criminals. Their MO indicates advanced training with good funding and organization. Although all Russian immigrants, they arrived in Alpharetta after leaving Los Angeles. No link with California activities has been released yet, but credit card fraud searches in LA will likely find any connections, if they exist.