A Hyattsville man has been ordered to pay back the $240,000 he stole by skimming personal information from more than 150 victims as they used Washington-area automated-teller-machines.
Konstantin Sintsev, 24, will also spend more than four years in prison for the scheme he ran with Latvian immigrant, Vitalijs Balsevics, a judge in Alexandria’s federal court ruled Tuesday.
Recommended Stories
Balsevics, 26, was in the country legally but will now be sent back to Latvia for violating his visa, court documents show. He will be deported after serving a 3-and-a-half-year prison term.
Both men pleaded guilty to targeting Chevy Chase Bank ATMs in six locations in Maryland and Virginia Between April 2008 and August 2008. They would set up a device on the cash machines that read the debit card’s magnetic strip, gathering basic account information. A second device attached to the ATM’s keypad would snag the user’s personal identification number.
The combination of bank account information and PIN enabled Balsevics and Sintsev to access the victims’ bank accounts and steal the cash.
Investigators originally said in court filings that the two had accessed more than 77 accounts, but in more recent filings, prosecutors say more than 150 people fell victim to the scheme.
Chevy Chase Bank reported to the U.S. Secret Service that several of its ATMs had been compromised after the bank received complaints from customers reporting fraudulent withdrawals, court documents said. Secret Service agent then set up surveillance outside the six compromised machines and eventually caught Balsevics and Sintsev in action.
Balsevics was arrested in September 2008, and pleaded guilty in November. Sintsev, however, evaded law enforcement for six months before being taken into custody in March, after investigators tracked him to Ocean City. While on the run, prosecutors say Sintsev continued to skim ATMs, including during a brief stay in New York.
When he was arrested, Sintsev was found with $16,354 in cash and a small quantity of marijuana, prosecutors said in court documents. He pleaded guilty in May.
