A Florida man who used stolen banking information from Maine customers to make more than $50,000 in unauthorized purchases pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to charges of access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Ariel Perez-Calvo, 28, of Miami faces up to 10 years in prison and as much as $250,000 in fines on the fraud charge and an additional mandatory minimum of two years in prison on the identity theft charge. His sentencing date was not immediately set.
Between Jan. 7 and Jan. 13, Perez-Calvo and another man, Roberto Lueje-Rodriguez, went on a spending spree using debit and credit card numbers belonging to Maine bank customers located in Penobscot, Knox, Hancock, Piscataquis, Franklin, Somerset, Kennebec and Androscoggin counties. Perez-Calvo had committed a similar fraud scheme in New Hampshire in November 2015 using New Hampshire banking customers’ information to make unauthorized purchases for more than $1,000, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Lueje-Rodriquez, 29, also of Miami, pleaded guilty on July 8 to the same charges as Perez-Calvo. He is free while awaiting sentencing.
Perez-Calvo and Lueje-Rodriquez used fake cards embossed with the name David Cuan, which was not the name of any victim. Each card had its own account number that appeared to be authentic, but had a magnetic strip encoded with the account numbers of the victims, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Perez-Calvo was arrested Jan. 13 at the Portland International Jetport, where he was waiting for a flight to Miami, and Rodriguez was arrested the same day at a hotel in Portland’s Old Port, according to police.
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