The sentence follows a prior hearing on January 26 in which co-defendant Alpha Diallo, 24, was sentenced to 95 months in prison and three years of supervised release. The men are also required to make restitution to the victims.
According to the original complaint contained in electronic records, the men were arrested on January 31, 2014, at Robbie's Shell Station off Interstate 95.
On that date, the complaint says, the men made and attempted to make various purchases of cartons of
cigarettes using counterfeit gift cards.
The clerk recognized them from earlier fraudulent card transactions and pressed the panic button.
Officers responded and arrested them.
In their vehicle, officers located 59 counterfeit gift cards, 33 cartons of cigarettes, and $267 in currency. Subsequent to his arrest, Diallo was heard on recorded jail calls speaking to his then girlfriend Tiffany Cobb about accessing a particular account and providing further information about the email account to "Levi."
"Levi" is the street name for Saiku Gando Barrie, identified in connection to another event.
Local law enforcement intercepted the email account and recovered an email containing dozens
of stolen credit card account numbers, consistent with the described access device fraud scheme, the complaint says.
According to the news release, the indictment charged the men were engaged in a scheme to acquire, among other things, large quantities of cigarettes in North Carolina and elsewhere using counterfeit gift cards. The gift cards utilized in the scheme were counterfeit because the data encoded in the magnetic strip of the cards had been altered to contain credit and debit card numbers that were not encoded upon them at the time they were manufactured.
Conspirators acquired stolen credit and debit card data from sources on the Internet.
Diallo and others received the stolen credit and debit card data in the form of email accounts to which they had access.
Conspirators used the stolen credit and debit card data to fraudulently re-encode cards for later use to purchase cigarettes and other items.
The indictment further charged that after acquiring several counterfeit cards, the men used the cards, and caused the cards to be used, to purchase numerous cartons of cigarettes.
The conspirators would generally travel from one store to another in a vehicle during a single trip to acquire a large volume of cigarettes. After acquiring the cigarettes, conspirators would transport them to other states to be resold at a profit.
The press release notes the scheme ended when the men attempted to continue the fraud at Robbie's.
Investigation of the case was conducted by the United States Secret Service, with the assistance of the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office, the Wake County Sheriff's Office and the Raleigh Police Department.
Assistant United States Attorney William M. Gilmore represented the United States.
