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November 30, 2007

Calif. man gets 5 1/2 years in bank-card scam

A California man faces deportation after agreeing to plead guilty to taking part in a scheme to steal bank-card information from supermarket customers in Rhode Island.

Arutyun Shatarevyan, 21, of Los Angeles, was sentenced yesterday in federal court to 66 months in prison for his role in the scheme earlier this year that siphoned $132,000 from the accounts of Stop & Shop customers in Rhode Island.

He will have to serve at least 85 percent of that sentence, or roughly 56 months, before he’s eligible for release, according to his lawyer Alex R. Kessel.

The chance that Shatarevyan will be deported is “very high,” Kessel said, after a hearing this morning in U.S. District Court. Shatarevyan emigrated from Armenia to the U.S. as a boy.

In sentencing Shatarevyan, U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith noted the Californian “didn’t appear to be the ringleader of the operation,” which played out at Stop & Shop supermarkets in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Shatavyan and three other Californians were arrested by state and Coventry police Feb. 26 at the Stop & Shop on Tiogue Avenue in Coventry where, federal and state authorities said, the four had gone to retrieve a checkout lane PIN pad rigged to capture shoppers' financial-account information.

Videotape evidence linked the men to 1,100 account thefts at Stop & Shops in Providence, Cranston and Coventry, and ultimately, to ATM withdrawals made in California, according to federal officials. The men removed or tried to remove original PIN pads from at least six stores in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The men were living in California before they flew to Rhode Island in early February.

Two of the men, Arman Ter-Esayan, and Gevork Baltadjian, have already been sentenced in the case.

Ter-Esayan, 22, of Valley Glen, was sentenced to six years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Baltadjian, 20, of Winnetka, was sentenced to 61 months in prison for playing a "minor" role in the scheme that siphoned $132,000 from the accounts of Stop & Shop customers in Rhode Island.

Sentencing for Mikael Stepanian, 28, of Studio City, is set for Dec. 6.

-- Journal staff writer Paul Grimaldi

Posted by Jack Perry  at 12:05 PM | Permalink

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