A Romanian man arrested last week for stealing EBT card information was convicted Tuesday, the United States Department of Justice said.
Mission Viejo resident Florin Duduianu, 39, was convicted on two counts of aggravated identity theft after a two-day bench trial, the DOJ said in a news release.
Duduianu, described by authorities as one of the most wanted men in Romania, was part of a group of 48 people arrested for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from state public assistance programs.
Prosecutors allege that in August 2023, they installed skimming devices on ATMs, gas pumps and checkout stands to capture the information necessary to take money provided to low-income Californians.
“Police saw Duduianu, accompanied by a passenger, drive up to a Wells Fargo ATM and make multiple withdrawals on different cards,” the DOJ release said. “Based on this information, officers pulled Duduianu over. Duduianu lied to the officers, telling them he was depositing, not withdrawing, money from the ATM.”
A search of Duduianu’s passenger produced Visa gift cards, ATM receipts and cash tied to people listed in the EBT database. Those people told police that “they did not know Duduianu or his car passenger and did not give permission to anyone to withdraw funds from their accounts,” the release said.
This isn’t Duduianu’s first conviction on fraud charges; he pleaded guilty on Jan. 5 to three counts of bank fraud and unlawful use of unauthorized access devices.
Duduianu is scheduled to be sentenced on March 29. He faces a sentence of up to 30 years on each bank fraud count, up to 20 years for use of unauthorized access devices and a mandatory two-year sentence for each aggravated identity theft count.
Those two-year sentences will be served consecutively to, not concurrently with, his other sentences.