Brazilians remain jailed in connection with skimming fraud case

HUBBARD — Two Brazilian men have remained in the Trumbull County jail since their Nov. 14 arrest after an alert Cortland Bank branch teller helped police and the FBI track them down on suspicion of using ATM skimmers.

A Federal grand jury is considering charges against Felipe Pena, 27, and Antonio Oliveira Neto, 26, for allegedly possessing ATM skimming devices.

Investigators got a lead when the drive-through teller at the West Liberty Street Cortland Bank noticed that her video display from the bank's ATM camera was blacked out.

The teller knew that two days earlier, someone covered the lens of the bank's ATM camera while making illegal withdrawals using cloned bank cards.

Using her cell phone camera, the teller snapped a picture of two men in a car that had pulled up to the ATM.

Police spotted the car at a gas station about two miles away and arrested Pena and Oliveira Neto.

A search of a storage unit rented by the two men in Cleveland turned up skimming devices, which are used to steal credit and debit card information from unsuspecting people using ATMs or other electronic readers.

Authorities also found 280 gift cards, blank credit cards, blank debit cards, as well as $139,000 divided into $5,000 stacks held together with multi-colored rubber bands.

An earlier inspection of one of the suspects' cell phone uncovered photographs of Pena at a hotel organizing money into piles and securing them with multi-colored rubber bands.

Investigators also say the phone contained videos of people taking money from ATMs and covering the ATM cameras with duct tape.

The phone also contained pictures of Western Union receipts of money that had been wired to Brazil.

Cortland Bank reported that the money illegally withdrawn from their ATM came from PNC accounts in Cincinnati.

According to an FBI affidavit, PNC bank told the Trumbull County Prosecutors Office that the estimated loss connected to a recent incident of ATM skimmer fraud was $180,000 from more than 140 accounts.

Both men remain in the Trumbull County jail while their cases are being considered by a federal grand jury. Their most recent hearing was before Magistrate George Limbert Dec. 22 in Youngstown.