An undocumented Romanian immigrant who lived in Hollywood was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for skimming more than $150,000 from the public-assistance benefit cards of low-income residents.<\/p>\n
Catalin-Marius Graur, 43, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, who also ordered him to pay $165,697 in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Graur pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court in October 2024 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.<\/p>\n
Graur is a Romanian citizen who entered the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2020 but overstayed his visa, prosecutors said. Graur traveled across Los Angeles and the Inland Empire installing sophisticated skimming devices on ATMs and point-of-sale terminals to record the account information of individuals who used them.<\/p>\n
Graur was arrested in New York City in an Airbnb rental apartment in June 2024. He had more than $37,000 in cash with him, along with 1,488 stolen access device numbers, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors say he worked with multiple members of a transnational criminal organization from Romania to carry out the scheme. A search warrant for the residence of one of Graur\u2019s accomplices revealed that Graur had sent him more than 36,000 stolen Electronic Benefit Transfer card numbers over three years.<\/p>\n
EBT card recipients, whom Graur specifically targeted, receive benefits designed specifically to help low-income households pay for housing, food, and other necessities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An undocumented Romanian immigrant who lived in Hollywood was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":119584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[60892,1582,276,74516,19625,14107,2961,224,5337,11449,49735,74517,7827],"class_list":{"0":"post-119583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-atms","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-cards","12":"tag-former","13":"tag-hollywood","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-resident","18":"tag-sentenced","19":"tag-skimming","20":"tag-years"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114973496145561475","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}