Two men pleaded guilty on Friday to charges they used hidden cameras and card skimming devices at Long Island Railroad ticket machines to steal bank account information from thousands of riders in Queens and Nassau counties.
Prosecutors have requested that Dorin Husa, 37, and Niculae Petre, 45, be sentenced to one year in prison and pay $7,000 apiece from cash recovered from their apartment during a court-ordered search of their Elmhurst apartment.
“These defendants took a source of convenience for thousands of commuters and turned it into their own personal piggy bank,” Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said in a statement.
Husa and Petre are among five Romanian nationals who prosecutors said mounted hidden cameras on Long Island Railroad ticket machines at the Bayside, Great Neck, Port Washington, Merillon Avenue, Greenvale and Sea Cliff stations, prompting an identity theft investigation in October that required checks of each of the railroad’s 278 ticket machines.
Prosecutors said approximately $70,000 has been lost as a result of the scheme. JPMorgan Chase has intimated to prosecutors their customers have lost $30,000 in the scheme.
“Though my office remains committed to bringing these criminals to justice, it’s essential that people protect themselves by being alert at ticketing machines, covering their PIN numbers when using debit cards, using credit cards or cash whenever possible, reviewing account statements and credit reports regularly and notifying the authorities immediately if they suspect identity theft,” Rice said.
Petre and Husa were arrested on Oct. 29 after a court-ordered search of their apartment yielded cameras, skimmers, plastic molds, memory cards, flash drives, computers $7,000 cash and thousands of stolen credit card numbers, prosecutors said.
Investigators also found in a toilet two flash drives that held account information and a safe that contained hundreds of magnetized cards re-encoded with stolen account information as well as records of stolen account numbers and a card reader.
Husa and Petre on Friday accepted a plea agreement to a single Class-D felony charge of criminal possession of forged devices. They are next scheduled to appear in court on April 25.
They faced charges of possession of a forged instrument and unlawful possession of personal identification information, criminal possession of forgery devices, grand larceny and conspiracy.
Efforts to reach Husa’s attorney, Jake LaSala, and Petre’s attorney, Anthony Como, were unavailing.
Husa and Petre allegedly partnered with Valer and Teodora Zaharia, who prosecutors arrested in October after police observed them retrieve two skimmer devices and hidden cameras from ticket vending machines at the Long Island Railroad’s Sea Cliff station.
Further investigation led police to the Zaharias’ Kew Gardens apartment, where they found skimmer molds and pinhole cameras similar to ones found on the vending machines, as well as lists of thousands of skimmed debit and credit card numbers and $52,000 in cash that prosecutors said was obtained using the stolen information.
The Zaharias initially told police they were living in a hotel in Queens.
Valer, 38, and Teodora, 28, have each been charged with felony counts of grand larceny. Their cases are still pending.
Another Romanian national, Cezar Nastasa, was also charged with counts of grand larceny, conspiracy, criminal possession of a forged instrument, unlawful possession of a skimmer device and criminal possession of a forgery device.
Shortly after Husa, Petre and the Zahariases were arrested, Nastasa fled to the United Kingdom. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Two other Romanian nationals who fled to the United Kingdom in November are being investigated as potential suspects but have not yet been charged, prosecutors said.