Flatbush Shomrim moved quickly Wednesday afternoon to track down two suspects who had planted a card skimmer inside a kosher grocery store on Ocean Avenue, ending in an arrest – and shining a fresh light on what officially describe as a badly outdated EBT card system that leaves benefits recipients defenseless once their information is stolen.

The store reported the skimmer at roughly 2:15 p.m. Wednesday after staff noticed the device attached to the card-reading machine, Flatbush Shomrim Coordinator Tzvi Weill, who has been closely tracking the skimming wave, told Belaaz in a Thursday interview.

“We responded over there right away,” Weill said. “The skimmer was connected to the machine already.”

Shomrim volunteers pulled surveillance footage and identified the two suspects leaving the store. Cameras tracked them walking down Ocean Avenue before they turned and entered a parked car, at which point Shomrim members lost sight of them. Volunteers were posted on corners throughout the area, reviewing camera feeds and canvassing blocks in search of the vehicle.

The suspects’ car eventually reappeared near East 19th Street and Avenue O, triggering a pursuit that ended when Shomrim blocked the vehicle in near Avenue M and Ocean Avenue. Both suspects were taken into custody by police at the scene at approximately 6 p.m.
Police told Belaaz the suspects were identified as Andi Dimitriadis, 43, and Eugen Tanasoiu, 44, and were charged with possession of a forgery device.

Weill said a search concluded that the pair had also visited numerous stores in other Jewish neighborhoods, though it remains unclear how many of those attempts were successful.
“They were in many stores in Crown Heights,” Weill said. “Whether they were successful or not, hard to tell, because they put them in, and then they come back and take them out.”

The car had been spotted in the days prior across Flatbush, Crown Heights, and Boro Park, according to Weill.

Weill described a simple but effective method of distraction used to install the skimmer without drawing the attention of store staff. The store has two registers near the entrance and a third counter further inside. One suspect kept the cashier occupied – repeatedly asking him to retrieve bread from behind the counter – while the second suspect attached the skimming device to the machine undetected.

Wednesday’s arrest comes roughly a week after Shomrim arrested a separate pair of suspects involved in stealing mail to obtain EBT card information – part of what Weill describes as a broader, increasingly organized fraud operation hitting the community on multiple fronts.

Weill said the skimmer arrest is only one piece of a much larger problem rooted in the outdated technology behind EBT cards and the system that processes them – an issue raised roughly two weeks ago at a press conference held by the Brooklyn Borough President on the steps of the downtown Brooklyn courthouse specifically to address it.

“Right now the system is very weak,” Weill said. “It’s a very old system.”
Unlike modern credit and debit cards, EBT cards do not contain chips or “tap to pay” tech, relying instead on magnetic strips that are easily read by skimming devices. Compounding the problem, Weill said, the system places no limit on the number of PIN attempts allowed on a stolen card – meaning a thief armed with a stolen card number can simply run through every possible four-digit PIN combination, up to 10,000 in total, without ever being locked out.
“If I take somebody’s mail, I can try as many attempts as I want to switch a four-digit password as I want without getting locked down on this system,” Weill said.

Using basic computer setups, Weill said, thieves can run through the full range of PIN combinations in a matter of minutes, change the PIN to one of their choosing, and then wait until benefits reload on the fifth or sixth of the month to drain the account in full.

“These guys have a computer system where they can, in minutes, run through” every possible PIN, change it, “and then on the fifth or sixth of the month they wipe you out,” Weill said.

Perhaps most troubling, Weill said, victims have no path to recovering stolen benefits, even when they can demonstrate the funds were stolen.

“Even if you can prove that it was stolen, that you lost your benefits, there’s nothing going back. You will not get any refunds going back. You’re losing everything,” Weill said.

Victims must simply wait for the following month’s benefits to be loaded – at which point, Weill warned, they remain just as vulnerable to having the same scheme repeated against them, since the underlying system vulnerabilities remain unaddressed.

“The system is so easy to hack that it’s being hacked every single month for millions of dollars,” Weill said.

Weill said Flatbush Shomrim has been actively notifying grocery stores throughout the neighborhood to be on alert for the kind of behavior exhibited by Wednesday’s suspects – unfamiliar customers lingering near checkout machines, distraction tactics aimed at store staff, and any sign of tampering with card readers.

“We constantly, constantly notify store owners, Weill said, urging staff to take note “when you see customers that usually don’t come around” and to stay alert at the register.
Weill noted that the longstanding advice for customers – to tug gently on the plastic privacy guard surrounding a card reader’s keypad to check whether it has been tampered with or replaced by a skimming overlay – remains a useful precaution shoppers can take on their own.

Wednesday’s quick arrest, Weill said, sends an important message to those running these schemes throughout the community.
“The people that are doing this have to know that it’s not as easy as they think it is, or won’t be as easy as they think it is going forward,” Weill said. “The rest is the people need to know that being someone’s dealing with it.”

Weill said Shomrim continues to work with affected stores throughout Flatbush and Crown Heights to determine the full scope of the operation and is asking residents to remain vigilant against further skimming attempts in the neighborhood.