By Rick Pfeiffer
Niagara Gazette
BUFFALO —
A federal grand jury has indicted five people on bank fraud-related charges involving thefts from casino-based ATMs, including some at Seneca Nation operations in the Falls and elsewhere.
Charged in the four count indictment are Jia Ming Huang, Rungen Huang, Zhen Qiang Liang, Chang Keng Zheng aka Yu Zheng and Siu S. Cheng. All the defendants live in either New York or Florida.
The charges, which include conspiracy to commit bank fraud, production and use of counterfeit access devices, possession of device making equipment and aggravated identity theft, carry mandatory minimum prison terms of two years and maximum terms of 30 years.
According to the indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, the five defendants engaged in their fraud from July 23 to Dec. 12, 2009.
Federal prosecutors charge they illegally obtained the credit and debit account numbers of hundreds of individual bank customers, used those account numbers to produce hundreds of counterfeit credit and debit cards and then used those counterfeit cards to fraudulently withdraw cash from ATMs.
Those cash machines were located at the Seneca Niagara Casino, the Seneca Allegany Casino, the Salamanca Bingo Hall and various other casinos throughout the country. In total, the defendants, and other co-conspirators withdrew a total of $510,500 using the counterfeit cards.
The investigation began in December 2009, when the New York State Police and the United States Secret Service began looking at a pattern of fraudulent ATM withdrawals.
The defendants were arrested on Dec. 12, after state and federal agents executed search warrants on three hotel rooms rented by the defendants in Salamanca. Agents also searched a van the defendants were driving.
Investigators seized counterfeit credit card making equipment, including credit card embossers, a tipping machine, a credit card reader and sheets of credit card numbers.
