An Arizona man has been jailed for 51 months for helping fraudsters steal people’s bank details.
Luis Ramirez, 43, of Mesa, Arizona, helped steal “leads” for fraudsters who were looking to steal money from the bank accounts of people in the U.S.
The “leads” consisted of financial information for the prospective victims that included bank account numbers.
Ramirez and his coconspirators trafficked “leads” that originated from payday loan applications of consumers across the United States.
Ramirez was also jailed for a separate case brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.
Ramirez was also jailed for his role in a transnational criminal organization that laundered $16.5 million dollars in narcotics proceeds for the Sinaloa Cartel.
“Those who knowingly supply fraudsters with personal and financial information about potential victims cause enormous harm to the American public”
In sentencing Ramirez, Judge Cynthia Bashant of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California determined 24 months of his sentence should run consecutively, so that Ramirez’s total sentence is 144 months in prison.
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Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said: “Those who knowingly supply fraudsters with personal and financial information about potential victims cause enormous harm to the American public.
“We are committed to investigating and prosecuting individuals who sell such information for illicit purposes.”
Inspector in Charge Eric Shen of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s (USPIS) Criminal Investigations Group, added: “The Postal Inspection Service is dedicated to protecting American consumers.
“In this case, small transactions were used to conceal the scheme, but that wasn’t enough to fool postal inspectors or keep us from adding it all together to put a halt to this fraud.”
14 defendants have been charged in relation to the case.
The indictment alleges the defendants and associates debited consumers’ bank accounts without authorization and used shell entities and “micro debits” to conceal the activity from banks.
“Micro debits” serve to conceal fraud by grouping unauthorized charges with a large number of low-value, straw transactions to lower the fraudster’s chargeback rate.
Another scheme participant, Harold Sobel, pleaded guilty to bank fraud conspiracy in federal court in Las Vegas. In December 2022, Sobel was sentenced to 42 months in prison.
