HONOLULU- H
aving your identity stolen while filling up on gas may seem far fetched to some, but that's exactly what happened to nearly two hundred people on Oahu last September.According to a grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday in Honolulu Circuit Court, three men traveled from California to Hawaii in late August of 2010 for the sole purpose of stealing credit and debit card information.
Akop Tadevosovich Changryan, Karapet Kalantryan and Araik Davityan face various charges of identity theft, conspiracy to commit identity theft and fraudulent use of a credit card.
Prosecutors say the three men were able to obtain credit and debit card information from 194 people on Oahu, resulting in $170,000 in fraudulent charges to six financial institutions.
Deputy Prosecutor Chris Van Marter declined to commit on the case citing a policy at the Honolulu Prosecutors Office not to discuss ongoing investigations.
However according to the indictment, here’s how the alleged plot played out:
After arriving on Oahu with his co-conspirators Changryan rented a van from United Truck Rental in Mapunapuna on September 4.
On September 9 the three men traveled in the van to four undisclosed Aloha Island Mart gas stations around Oahu.
The suspects parked the van in strategic locations so gas station employees could not see Changryan attach “skimming devices” to the internal hardware components of the gas pumps.
During the next fifteen days the skimming devices captured all of the data contained on the magnetic strip of credit and debit cards being used by customers to pay for gas, including sensitive pin numbers.
Once the suspects were satisfied enough information had been gathered, they allegedly used the same blocking technique with the rented van to retrieve the skimming devices at each of the four gas stations they targeted.
In late September the indictment says the three men returned to California where they began making counterfeit credit and debit cards from the information captured by the electronic skimmers.
The six financial institutions that lost funds during the plot include First Hawaiian Bank, American Savings Bank, Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Hawaii State Federal Credit Union and Hawaiian Tel Federal Credit Union.
Police detectives in California arrested Changryan on January 27 after a long investigation revealed he had allegedly performed the same skimming operation in the summer of 2010 at a Shell gas station in Laguna Beach.
He was charged with multiple counts of using unauthorized credit card information to purchase items at locations in Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, New Mexico and Arizona.
At the time of his arrest Changryan, 27, was being held at the Orange County Jail on $100,000 bail.
The ages of Kalantryan and Davityan were not stated in the Honolulu indictment.
Aloha Petroleum, the company that owns the targeted gas stations, declined to comment about the indictment except to say it has taken steps to prevent any future card skimming incidents.
Have a news tip? Contact Andrew Pereira at 368-7273. Follow Andrew on Twitter at Khon_Reporter
