United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced Friday that United States District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. sentenced Pavel Abramyan, 27, of Rancho Cordova, to three and a half years in federal prison for possessing stolen credit card numbers. Abramyan pleaded guilty on October 15, 2009.
This case was the product of an investigation by the United States Postal Inspection Service. Assistant United States Attorney Philip Ferrari prosecuted the case.
According to the plea agreement, Abramyan admitted that he had been employed at a Rocklin gas station from May 10 through July 7, 2007. Customers of the gas station indicated that during that time the pump-side card reader was frequently not functional, and they were required to leave their credit cards with an attendant while they pumped gas.
On November 13, 2007, Abramyan bought over $2,000 worth of merchandise from a Babies-R-Us store in Roseville using three credit cards, each purporting to be his own. In fact, the accounts belonged customers of the Rocklin gas station. During a search of his home, officers found a magnetic stripe card reader with instructions and a software operation guide, a computer, a floppy disk reader and multiple floppy disks. Abramyan also possessed eight credit cards in his own name, but with account information programmed into the magnetic stripe that did not belong to him. The floppy disks contained account information from more than 2,000 credit card accounts, none of which belonged to the defendant. As part of his plea agreement, the defendant forfeited all of the seized computer equipment to the government.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California