3 charged in tampering of Las Vegas gas pumps
Three people are accused of installing credit card skimmers at gas stations in the west and southwest Las Vegas Valley to steal customers’ personal information.
Las Vegas police arrested Osniel Tumbarell, 32, Ruben Rivera, 34, and Alian Bana-Garcia, 34, on Thursday. They are jailed at the Clark County Detention Center.
The arrests are the latest in a state and federal law enforcement crackdown on credit card skimming in Las Vegas. Authorities have warned the public to be vigilant about monitoring their credit card activity, due to the frequency with which skimming devices have been popping up on ATM machines throughout the area.
Police have accused Tumbarell, Rivera and Bana-Garcia of using U-Haul vans and other vehicles to block people from seeing as they tampered with gas pumps and installed the skimming devices on the pumps, according to an arrest report.
The Metropolitan Police Department was alerted April 7 about two men in a U-Haul van tampering with a gas station pump near West Cheyenne Avenue and North Rainbow Boulevard. An officer determined the men were likely trying to install or remove a skimmer, which steals credit or debit card information that is then used to create bogus cards.
Police traced the van rental to Tumbarell and a second U-Haul rental to Rivera. The arrest report indicates police then tracked the two to a Chevron station at 1051 Desert Foothills Drive, near West Charleston Boulevard, about 8:45 p.m. on April 12.
The report accuses Tumbarell of positioning a U-Haul at a pump “in a manner where he could conceal his actions with the side passenger doors open.” Rivera acted as a “lookout” from a different car for Tumbarell while he tampered with the pump, according to the report.
They left, and an officer found a skimmer placed on the pump with which Tumbarell tampered.
About an hour later, Tumbarell and Rivera arrived at another Chevron station, at 6480 S. Durango Drive., near West Sunset Road. The two then parked “in the same manner” as the incident at 1051 Desert Foothills.
Again, the report stated, Rivera acted as a lookout for Tumbarell. A man later identified as Bana-Garcia pulled up in a Toyota Tundra and also acted as a lookout. And again, an officer found a skimming device on the tampered gas pump.
Police detained, and later arrested, the three.
An arrest report spells Rivera’s first name as “Ruben,” while jail and court records have it spelled “Ruban.”
Jail records show that Rivera and Tumbarell face two counts each of establishing or possessing a financial forgery laboratory and conspiring to commit a nonfelony crime. Tumbarell faces two counts of possessing a scanning device with intent to defraud. Rivera also faces one count of the same charge.
Bana-Garcia faces one count each of conspiracy to commit a nonfelony crime and establishing or possessing a financial forgery laboratory.
As the Las Vegas Review-Journal previously reported, card skimming is on the rise in Las Vegas.
Between 2012 and 2016, Metro’s financial crimes section recovered 162 gasoline pump skimmers, 43 hand-held skimmers, 31 ATM skimmers, and two point-of-sale terminal skimmers.
Card skimming has its roots in Eastern Europe, emerging on the financial crimes scene in the early ’90s, according to Metro Detective Jeff Grace. Grace said there are still big Eastern European groups carrying out skimming operations in Las Vegas.
Federal investigators are in the midst of dismantling what they describe as a multistate, multimillion-dollar money laundering operation that was headquartered in Las Vegas.
According to the 47-count indictment, the 21 Brazilian men charged in the scheme relied heavily on the use of credit card skimmers to carry out the fraud. A federal prosecutor said last month that authorities obtained surveillance footage of one of the suspects attaching skimming devices to ATM machines on the Strip.
Review-Journal writer Jenny Wilson contributed to this report. Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.
