Man gets 8 years in prison for role in credit card theft ring

A 29-year-old man has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for his role in an international multimillion dollar credit fraud and money laundering conspiracy that spanned four years.

Bruno Macedo Correia will also be required to complete three years of supervised release and pay more than $2.2 million in restitution under terms of his sentence, which was handed down Thursday.

Correia pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He had previously admitted to using “skimmers” on ATMs and global cash advance machines to steal account information, among other schemes to obtain money, between January 2013 and January 2017, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

He is one of 12 people, as of Thursday, who have pleaded guilty or have been sentenced in connection with the conspiracy. Twenty-one were indicted in 2017.

Correia and his co-conspirators also stole credit card information through malware and set up credit card forgery “laboratories” in homes and hotel rooms to manufacture counterfeit credit and debit cards, officials said. The counterfeit cards were then used to withdraw cash from ATM machines in Nevada as well as make high-end purchases for luxury watches, jewelry and clothing at hotel-casinos and businesses in Las Vegas and in at least six states.

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