(Long Island, NY) Today, Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota will announce criminal charges against three Suffolk County men involved in a rent-a-car, steal-a-car scam that employed fake ID’s, drivers’ licenses, and self-manufactured credit cards to steal rental cars from Avis, Hertz and other companies to sell them for quick cash.
Two of the suspects, from Brentwood and Bayshore, rented the vehicles with the fake credentials created by a third suspect, a 23 year old who, in his bedroom in his parents’ Lindenhurst home, used manufacturing equipment he purchased on E-Bay to provide his accomplices with authentic-looking drivers licenses, ID cards, and credit cards, District Attorney Spota said.
Using the counterfeit cards to rent late model cars, including a Mercedes and a Cadillac, from rental car vendors at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark Airports, the men “sold their rental cars for pennies on the dollar,’ DA Spota said. The district attorney cited as an example the defendants’ sale of a newly rented 2013 Cadillac for $2,100.
Exhibits at the press conference include the equipment used to manufacture the fraudulent credit cards and drivers licenses including embossing machines, thermal printers, a “Tipper machine” used to imprint raised numbers on fake credit cards with silver or gold foil, “Skimmer” devices used to copy personal information from the magnetic strip on victims’ credit cards, blank plastic card stock and other raw materials necessary for the production of forged cards.
A fourth defendant, from Holbrook, was arrested during the investigation for selling marijuana. All four of the men have been indicted and arraigned.
Defendants are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
