WESTLAKE, Ohio — Just a few seconds.
That’s how long it takes to hide a skimmer at a grocery store checkout.
Westlake Police recently saw that up close, when they jumped into an investigation of a card-skimming ring. On March 27, officers arrested two men who turned out to be from Eastern Europe. One of them was already being pursued by law enforcement for a crime overseas.
“People who practice this type of craft are very good at what they do,” said Westlake Police Captain Jerry Vogel. “Unfortunately, they don’t use their skills for good.”
News 5 has been covering a wave of card-skimming across Northeast Ohio for more than a year.
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Thieves install covers on payment machines to steal card data when shoppers swipe. Criminal rings are targeting SNAP, or food-stamp, recipients in particular since their cards only have basic magnetic stripes – not security chips or tap-to-pay technology.
In Westlake, the police department got a call on March 26 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the federal SNAP program. The USDA was responding to a report of a skimmer found by employees at Giant Eagle’s Market District store on Detroit Road at Crocker Park.
Overhead video from inside the store shows two men going through a checkout lane on March 22. One man distracts the clerk while the other puts a skimmer on the payment machine.
Police used surveillance videos and license plate readers to identify the car that the men were driving – an Acura SUV with Illinois plates. Then they watched and waited.
On March 27, Flock cameras mounted on traffic-light poles on Crocker Road caught the same SUV going by. Detectives tracked the car to a parking lot near the Market District store and arrested two men who were acting suspicious, according to a police report.
“They gave us some fake names at first,” Vogel said. “They even presented a fake, UK identification. Turns out, once we took fingerprints … working with the United States Secret Service, we figured out that one man was from Romania and one was from Croatia.”
Police identified the men as Petru-Calin Lazar and Istvan Szabo. They were charged in Rocky River Municipal Court with possessing criminal tools and assisting in a crime.
Vogel said Lazar and Szabo were not the same men who originally hid the skimmer.
But a March 27 video from the Market District store, captured right before Westlake Police swooped in, shows Lazar trying to retrieve data from the skimming device.
The newest generation of skimmers features Bluetooth technology, which lets criminals pull down card numbers and PINs using phones from a short distance away.
If nobody finds them, those skimmers can be cleared and used again to steal data from hundreds of customers.
“It’s your classic organized crime,” Vogel said. “There’s a hierarchy of who does what in this criminal organization. … There’s probably another part of the organization that sells the information that they glean off the skimmer.”
In this case, though, the police don’t believe the criminals got anything.
“We’re not aware of anyone’s information that was compromised in this case,” Vogel said. “Granted, we don’t know what happened between the 22nd and the 25th, when the skimmer was actually detected. We don’t know if anyone came to get any information in that time period. We’re hoping not. The skimmer will be analyzed to try to figure that type of information out.”
The Secret Service is part of a task force investigating skimming, money laundering and SNAP benefits theft. The Ohio Investigative Unit is the lead agency on SNAP fraud cases across the state.
Westlake police have seen skimmers pop up before. But it’s rare to make an arrest.
And this case was extremely unusual. Vogel said Lazar was wanted by INTERPOL, the international law enforcement organization, for a crime committed in Romania. Police turned Lazar and Szabo over to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to be deported.
The bust wouldn’t have been possible without lots of collaboration – and technology, Vogel said.
“Much different than 25 years ago, when I first started,” he added. “We have license plate readers. We have surveillance cameras everywhere. We have body cams. We have dash cams. … It really does help to combat this type of crime.”
He also credited the sharp-eyed supermarket employees for finding and reporting the skimmer to federal authorities.
Giant Eagle declined News 5’s request to interview the worker who discovered the skimmer. In an emailed statement, a company spokeswoman said the grocer is focused on protecting shoppers’ personal information.
“We have multiple preventative and detective security practices in place intended to help in the discovery of skimmer devices, including frequent checks of all register PIN pads,” she wrote. “Customers are encouraged to utilize tap-to-pay functionality whenever possible to further increase payment security.”
Outside the Market District store on Tuesday, customer Austin Reese was surprised to learn about the skimmer and the police investigation.
“I think it’s scummy,” he said of card-skimming.
He’s aware of the crime wave, but this is the first case he’s heard about at a store where he routinely shops.
“It’s very shocking,” Reese said. “Especially in an area like this.”
