Baltimore man gets five years for fake card scam

A man from Baltimore in the US has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison after being found guilty of re-encoding credit cards, debit cards and gift cards with stolen information in order to defraud hundreds of victims.

Leroy Holmes (62) used the re-encoded cards – which used the real banking information of his victims – to buy fuel at gas stations in Maryland and Pennsylvania which he then sold to truck drivers at half price in exchange for cash.

He has also been ordered to repay $212,000 in victim restitution, forfeit electronic equipment and pay a fine of around $106,000.

Some of the counterfeited credit and debit cards created and used by Holmes contained unemployment insurance benefits provided to victims from the state of California and were used without each victim’s knowledge or permission, according to the Department of Justice. 

“Holmes created or used at least 594 counterfeit credit and debit cards, resulting in a loss of at least $212,000 to financial institutions, businesses and cardholders,” it said.

Holmes’ activity is just one example of an epidemic of identity theft and card fraud in the US, where there were almost 1.7 million incidents in 2021, up from 1.4 million in 2020 and just over 600,000 in 2020. Around 390,000 of those incidents involved credit card fraud, making it the top form of identity theft.

According to a report by Javelin Strategy & Research, identity theft cases resulted in losses of $56bn in 2021. The most common form of credit card fraud now involves the formation of new accounts, as credit card chip technology has made existing account fraud more difficult.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay