On Thursday, federal prosecutors announced the arrest of 15 people in L.A. who are suspected of using information electronic benefit transfer cards that had been illegally "skimmed." The accused would allegedly make unauthorized withdrawals of funds that had been disbursed to people in need.
More than 300 law enforcement officers began monitoring about 20 ATM locations across the Los Angeles area early Wednesday morning, identifying individuals who were repeatedly taking cash out of the machines. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the suspects were using "cloned" cards encoded with information that had been stolen from off of existing cards used by the California Department of Social Services to endow CalFresh and CalWORKs benefits to qualified recipients.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the money is withdrawn using debit and gift cards, and other magnetic strip-bearing devices. Only the fake cards are encoded with information from people's real EBT cards. The encoded information is most likely stolen using skimming devices placed inside of ATM machines, that read and record the information, transferring it onto the fake card.
The investigation revealed that the fraudulent withdrawal of these benefits is done with ``cloned'' cards, which are debit cards, gift cards or other devices with magnetic strips that have been encoded with information from legitimate EBT cards. Court documents allege that at least some of those involved in the fraudulent withdrawals obtained stolen EBT card information from skimming devices installed on ATM machines, the DOJ said.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said, "By stealing public benefits using counterfeit EBT cards, the defendant in these cases plundered the accounts of some of our community's poorest residents -- people who need these benefits to survive."