Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee H. Vilker said at the plea hearings that the government could prove that, during overnight hours at 24-hour Stop & Shop stores, the defendants replaced PIN-pad terminals with nearly identical devices that had been electronically chnaged to capture customers’ account numbers and PINs.

Entering a store, one of the defendants would distract a clerk while others swapped terminals, "which took as little as 12 seconds," the U.S. Attorney's office said.

Several days later, they returned to the store, replaced the original terminal, and made off with the altered one holding customers’ account information.

The defendants captured account numbers from at least four Stop & Shop stores: Tiogue Avenue in Coventry; 200 Atwood Ave., Cranston; Quaker Lane in Warwick; and Branch Avenue in Providence.

Authorities said they confirmed fraudulent transactions using accounts captured at the Coventry and Cranston stores.

U.S. Secret Service agents have confirmed that unidentified people in California and Arizona fraudulently used at least 238 compromised account numbers captured at the Coventry and Cranston stores.

As a result, $132,018 in fraudulent charges have been made against accounts at several financial institutions, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

A search of Manchester, Conn., hotel rooms where the men were staying found materials used in skimming credit- and debit-card information, including credit-card readers. A laptop computer seized from Stepanian’s room had thousands of credit- and debit-card account numbers and PINs, stored in folders labeled “Stop & Shop.”