Fugitive guilty of nearly $10M in bogus travel purchases

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A man who escaped to Mexico to avoid sentencing in a 1996 credit-card case in New York has pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Pittsburgh of making nearly $10 million in fraudulent credit-card purchases, most of them international airline tickets, while on the lam.

Nicolas Frank Sucich, 48, likely faces more than four years in federal prison under a plea agreement struck today to charges of wire and access device fraud. He’ll return for sentencing Jan. 5.

Federal prosecutors say Sucich set up a business called FCO Travels in Mexico. Using that business, he used a fraudulent Scotiabank MasterCard account to buy millions of dollars’ worth of airline tickets from a legitimate Pittsburgh-area travel agency, then re-sold the tickets for cash at discounted rates to travelers, among other schemes.