Grand jury indicts 11 for making credit cards at Las Vegas hotels
A Clark County grand jury has indicted 11 people in a year-long scheme to make credit cards and collect cash advances at various Las Vegas casinos, prosecutors said Friday.
The defendants used thousands of credit cards to fund their lifestyles and even bail each other out of jail after they were arrested for similar activity, said prosecutor Nicole Cannizzaro.
The 118-count indictment names Christopher Ricabo, Richard Medina, Jeremy Moffitt, Alondra Estimada, Caroline Pena, Kimberly Andres Mendoza, Maridul Acevedo, Jazelle-Lin Sarimento, Richard Sarthou, Richard Ponce and Erika Sanchez.
Charges include racketeering, burglary, forgery, attempted theft, possessing personal identifying information, establishing or possessing a financial forgery lab and trafficking in a controlled substance.
Several of the defendants have ties to the Phillipines and California, according to Cannizzaro.
The prosecutor said that between November 2013 and November 2014 the group operated out of hotel rooms in Station Casinos, the Mirage, Tuscany Suites & Casino, The Orleans, Bellagio, Aria and Hooters. They would access stolen identification information made available on Websites fed by criminal organizations, create phony credit cards, take them to cash-advance machines and present those receipts at a casino cashier cage, Cannizzaro said.
The defendants would obtain upwards of $500 or $1,000 in each of the thousands of transactions, she said.
Sarthou, who authorities believe was the leader of the operation and who faces charges in seven similar cases, was being held at the Clark County Detention Center on $1 million bail.
Medina, the only other defendent who is behind bars, was ordered held on $70,000 bail.
District Judge Douglas Herndon issued arrest warrants for the remaining nine defendants.
Sarthou was arrested at Aria in Nov. 2013 after he tried to use a fake Western Union debit card to withdraw $400 from the “Player Cash Advantage” at the cashier cage, according to a police report. An officer who responded to the casino ran his thumb across the embossed letters and numbers and the ink rubbed off.
“The embossed numbers and letters are not a crisp detailed raised foundation,” and embossed numbers didn’t match the printed numbers on the card, the report stated. “These are common signs of a forgery credit card.”
In Jan. 2014, Sarthou was spotted at Boulder Station Hotel and Casino trying to get a cash advance for $1,000 with a forged card, police said.
Later that month at Bellagio, officers found Ricabo with sandpaper in his pocket and credit cards with the numbers scraped off. Police suspected that Ricabo and Medina were tied to at least $180,000 in fraudulent transactions.
Inside a room that Ricabo had rented with stolen credit card information, police found four laptops, a printer, an embosser, multiple checks, wireless hotspots, laminating paper, photo paper cut in the shape of credit cards and two razors, according to the report.
Cannizzaro could not estimate the total value of the scheme.
The prosecutor said some of the defendants, who were arrested and later posted bail, were overheard on recorded phone calls from the Clark County Detention Center, asking others to use phony credit cards to obtain bail money and leave the country.
Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
