A woman who investigators say used fraudulent credit cards containing information “skimmed” from legitimate credit cards, has pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $48,000 from Target stores in Colorado and seven other states.
The woman, Gintare Sakinyte, 27, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of two counts of fraud when she is sentenced in U.S. District Court in Denver in August.
Federal investigators believe that Sakinyte was aided by accomplices at gas stations in Chicago and Bergenfield, N.J., who skimmed credit cards of patrons.
The accomplices, federal authorities believe, made copies of the data on credit cards of customers at the gas stations. They then transferred the information to the fraudulent credit cards used by Sakinyte.
Criminals transfer the information from the magnetic strip of the legitimate credit or debit cards to the fraudulent credit cards.
Late last year, Target fraud investigators in Chicago alerted Target stores nationwide that a woman was using counterfeit credit cards to purchase iPods there.
On Oct. 29, Colorado Springs police were sent to a Target store after being alerted that Sakinyte was there using a fraudulent credit card.
She was arrested and found to have fake-identification documents and counterfeit credit cards both with her and in her car, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Denver.
Inside her car, investigators found a laptop, a USB flash drive, a magnetic-strip reader/encoder machine and a GPS device, all used to aid in the fraud, according to investigators.
Sakinyte used the fake credit cards throughout the Front Range, including Denver and Colorado Springs, according to federal investigators.
Sakinyte also went to Target stores in Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Kentucky.
The investigation into Sakinyte’s alleged crime spree was led by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with assistance from the Secret Service, the Colorado Springs Police Department and fraud investigators for Target stores.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
