Security

ATM skimmer gets 3 and a half years in prison

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November 16, 2021

Janos Vaczi, a Romanian national, was recently sentenced to 3-and-a-half years in federal prison for an ATM skimming scheme. A federal court in Erie, Pennsylvania, convicted Vaczi of stealing more than $106,000 from bank accounts in the Erie and Meadville areas by skimming card information from ATMs, according to a report by Go Erie.

FBI agents arrested Vaczi in 2019 after he was linked to an ATM skimming incident at Marquette Savings Bank. He has since pled guilty for stealing information from at least 264 bank accounts from March 2018 to June 2019. Following his term in prison, he will be eligible for deportation since he likely entered the country illegally, according to the report.

"He traveled into the United States for the sole purpose of ripping off Americans," Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian Trabold said in court to U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter.