Three Cuban nationals who traveled across Iowa while using stolen identities and credit and debit card numbers pled guilty in federal court in Cedar Rapids.
Pedro Alvarez Rodriguez, age 36, from Miami, Florida, was convicted of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit access device fraud on Sept. 21, 2017. Dunieski Santana Moreno, age 26, from Miami, Florida, was convicted of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit access device fraud on Nov. 1, 2017. Liliany de Armas Mena, age 21, from Louisville, Kentucky, was convicted of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit access device fraud on Nov. 1, 2017. Though living in the United States, all three are Cuban citizens.
In their plea agreements, Alvarez Rodriguez, Santana Moreno, and de Armas Mena admitted that in January and February of 2017, they used counterfeit cards with account information stolen from at least thirty-five accounts. They used the counterfeit cards to make unauthorized purchases at Wal-Mart stores throughout Iowa. These purchases included goods as well as the purchase and reloading of “shopping cards" or “gift cards."
In his plea agreement, Alvarez Rodriguez admitted that the account numbers on the counterfeit cards were obtained via “skimming" devices designed to obtain victims’ numbers without their authorization or knowledge. These stolen account numbers would then be encoded onto counterfeit magnetic stripe cards that had the appearance of credit cards, which were then used at Wal-Mart self-checkout registers.
In the four-day period of Jan. 29, 2017, to Feb. 1, 2017, Alvarez Rodriguez, Santana Moreno, and de Armas Mena drove hundreds of miles across the state of Iowa to use these counterfeit cards for fraudulent purchases at various Wal-Mart stores, including those in Mount Pleasant, Altoona, Le Mars, Sioux Center, Spencer, Spirit Lake, Mason City, Waverly, and Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Sentencing before United States District Court Chief Judge Leonard T. Strand will be set after presentence reports are prepared. Alvarez Rodriguez, Santana Moreno, and de Armas Mena remain in the custody of the United States Marshal and will remain in custody pending sentencing. Each faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years’ imprisonment and a possible maximum sentence of 9.5 years’ imprisonment, a $500,000 fine, $200 in special assessments, and 3 years of supervised release following any imprisonment.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Lyndie M. Freeman and was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Waverly Police Department.
Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.
The case file number is 17-CR-2044.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
