Boston-area police have arrested and begun prosecution of man on criminal identity theft charges after he was allegedly caught attempting to use stolen personal information that he may have obtained through credit card skimming techniques.
Twenty-eight-year-old Ivaylo Hristov, who is originally from Bulgaria but has recently lived in Ontario, Canada, was picked up by Quincy Police on Wednesday evening and charged with one count of unlawful use of an ATM, one count of false reproduction without consent, one count of forging a credit or ATM, and one count of larceny of more than $250, the Boston Herald reported.
Police say that Hristov had been part of a group of Bulgarians who have been orchestrating identity theft crimes in Boston and Chicago and sending the profits back to their homeland.
Their method of choice when it came to scamming their victims was credit card skimming, which consists of secretly installing devices on an ATM card slot to read the card information of its users. Additionally, the card's password information is sometimes stolen as well through the use of a hidden camera.
A number of towns surrounding the city of Boston - including Milton, Saugus, and Quincy - as well as Chicago had recently fallen victim to an increasing amount of criminal identity theft cases and credit card skimming operations believed to be operated by the Bulgarian group, gaining the attention of the Secret Service in the process.
According to Quincy Detective Lieutenant John Steele, the amount of money stolen from these skimming operations could be "in the six figures," the Patriot Ledger reported.
Hristov was taken in by authorities after allegedly using a forged credit card using stolen data at a Citizens Bank in Quincy, tipping off the authorities in the process. According to the Herald, he had $1,500 in cash in his wallet at the time of his arrest. He was arraigned the following morning in Quincy District Court.
