From Department of Justice
Eight members of a Cuban fraud ring have been charged with conspiracy and bank fraud for operating a fraudulent scheme which resulted in more than $700,000 in financial loss, announced U.S. Attorney Don Cochran for the Middle District of Tennessee. All of the defendants have pleaded guilty and all but three have been sentenced.
This case was investigated by the FBI; the LaVergne Police Department; and the Murfreesboro Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Siji Moore and Stephanie N. Toussaint are prosecuting the case.
According to court documents, between July 2014 and July 2016, the defendants traveled from the Miami, Florida area and elsewhere to the middle Tennessee area for the purpose of stealing identities and bank account information. This was accomplished by placing card skimming devices on numerous gas pumps around the greater Nashville area. Once the skimming devices captured account information from customer’s cards, the fraud ring used the stolen account numbers to create re-encoded bankcards and then used the re-encoded bankcards to purchase electronics and other goods from retailers.
The fraud ring also stole business checks from customer mail boxes and then infiltrated the business bank accounts and used the stolen information to create fraudulent business checks. The fraudulent checks were made payable to defendants’ aliases and cashed at various financial institutions in the middle Tennessee area and elsewhere.
All of the defendants were charged during November and December 2017 and have pleaded guilty. Charged in the conspiracy are:
- Alexis Salgueiro-Rodriguez, 27, sentenced to 60 months in prison;
- Yasel Nodarse, 29, sentenced to 25 months in prison;
- Daniel Martinez-Mazon, 39, and Luis Enrique Vazquez-Pedroso, 31, each sentenced to 23 months in prison; and
- Alain Rivero-Rodriguez 37, sentenced to 22 months in prison.
- Yuseff Antonio Elias, 32, Emilio Rafael-Gomez, 31, and Oscar Diaz de la Cruz, 30, are awaiting sentencing.
