Man who overstayed his visa stole food aid from thousands of needy Californians, feds say

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

A man believed to have been a part of a Romanian criminal organization was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week after he stole tens of thousands of welfare cards across California and New York.
Catalin-Marius Graur, 43, was sentenced Aug. 4 after pleading guilty in October 2024 to one count of bank fraud. When he was arrested at a New York City Airbnb apartment in June 2024, he had over $37,000 in cash and nearly 1,500 stolen account access numbers in his possession, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
In his scheme, officials said Graur targeted those receiving Electronic Benefit Transfer funds, which are distributed by social services departments to help low-income communities receive food and cash aid. In California, these are accessed through programs like CalFresh — previously known as food stamps — and CalWORKS.
According to DOJ officials, Graur would steal EBT card information by attaching 'sophisticated skimming devices' to ATMs and other sales machines across Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. Once the victim entered their card, the device captured their information. Fraudulent cards can be made with the stolen information and used to withdraw EBT funds.
Graur was not living in the United States legally, according to officials. A Romanian citizen, he entered the U.S. in 2020 on a tourist visa but overstayed his visit, the release said. He worked with multiple people internationally in the scheme, with one accomplice receiving more than 36,000 stolen EBT card numbers from Graur over the course of three years, the statement said. Another co-conspirator involved in the scheme, Mihai-Adrian Humoiu, was sentenced to over seven years in prison in May, according to the FBI.
According to the Los Angeles division of the FBI, which investigated Graur's case, there are multiple instances of Romanian citizens coming to the U.S. to commit bank fraud. The agency has investigated that crime route in particular for many years.
In 2023, The Times reported on a string of Romanian citizens who had been arrested for skimming EBT funds through ATMs, including Virgil Negru, a member of the Eforie City Council, who was charged with felony forgery and identity theft.
Because the process of skimming is complicated and requires lots of different steps, the crimes are often organized and conducted in groups. It's a crime of opportunity, they said, and scammers travel anywhere they think they could find success — it's not exclusive to California or Romania.
Unlike modern debit or credit cards, EBT cards traditionally have not had microchips, making them especially easy to clone. But that changed in California in April, when the state rolled out new cards with microchips, said Gerry Bonilla, the division chief for program compliance in the state's Social Services Department. Customers with the new cards can use the tap function for transaction at all businesses with the feature available on their sales machines.
Since issuing the new cards, Bonilla said that the department has received fewer reports of EBT scamming. Nowadays, most of the reports his office receives of EBT card scamming come from stores without microchip readers on their point of sale machines.
The Times also reported that wait times for EBT fund reimbursement after reporting a scam could take weeks, as agencies became overwhelmed with requests. In California, this process has quickened in recent years, with the process now being nearly 'instantaneous,' Bonilla said. Customers have to file a benefit reimbursement claim within 90 days starting on the day of the theft. The state requires that claim to be processed within 10 days, but Bonilla said it often only takes one or two days, depending on the circumstances of the theft.
CalFresh has additional requirements for reimbursement. Customers cannot be reimbursed twice in one Federal Fiscal Year and the amount 'cannot exceed the equivalent of two months' worth of their monthly allotment per occurence,' Bonilla said in an email.
Separately, another person, also from Romania, plead guilty to bank fraud and asylum fraud in San Francisco for the same type of scam with EBT cards, according to another DOJ statement. Marius Marian, 39, illegally accessed over $500,000 in EBT funds through attaching skimming devices to ATMs. Marian is a Romanian citizen who illegally entered the U.S. and then was deported in 2019 after serving eight months in custody for bank fraud. In an application for asylum, submitted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security around April 2023, he knowingly failed to disclose his previous deportation, the statement said. His sentencing is scheduled for October.