Bulgarian pleads guilty in Chicago scam fraud case
A Bulgarian national arrested in March on charges of financial crimes pleaded guilty on October 23 and was sentenced to four years in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, reports in Chicago said.
Dimitar Vangelov (27) was arrested in March. A search warrant found eight credit, debit and gift cards with his name on them, but had been linked to the bank accounts of other people, according to a Chicago Sun-Times Wire report, picked up by the local Chigaco CBS affiliate.
Investigators later found hundreds of bank cards encoded with stolen bank account numbers from people overseas, as well as skimming devices, the report said.
This was the second case in as many days involving the sentencing of Bulgarian nationals in the US for financial crimes.
On October 22, a judge in Alabama sentenced Antonio Velikov (41) and Mariana Pashova (35) to 10 years in prison for identity theft and bank fraud, a local NBC affiliate reported. The duo was arrested in May and pleaded guilty in June.
Velikov and Pashova was involved in skimming operations in six states and were caught when attempting to install a skimming device in a bank ATM. They were found to be in possession of 340 counterfeit cards and $50 000 in cash. Their operation cost Bank of America more than $860 000, the report said.
(Photo: foxumon/sxc.hu)
