A 21-year-old Tucson man was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison for his role in an identity-theft ring that purchased stolen bank-card numbers over the Internet to withdraw more than $1 million from ATMs.
Jacob Vincent Green-Bressler was sentenced in federal court for conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, aggravated identity theft and possession of stolen authentication features.
The charges stem from activity that began around September 2003 when Green-Bressler solicited and was supplied with stolen credit- and debit-card account information of U.S. banking customers by people in foreign countries.
He was able to get the information by going into Internet chat rooms run by the suppliers, who would advertise for sale card information obtained illegally through various schemes, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona.
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The information included personal identification numbers, expiration dates, passwords and Social Security numbers, among other things that are required to produce a workable format that is encoded onto fake credit cards.
The fraudulent cards were used at ATMs around Tucson, including one instance in March 2005 when Green-Bressler and two of his 16 co-defendants used one of the cards to withdraw about $148,000 at the Casino Del Sol.
About 50 percent of whatever was withdrawn from the ATMs was wired to the overseas suppliers.
In a letter written to a Superior Court judge, Green-Bressler's parents said his computer skills led to a job offer from Microsoft at the age of 12.
"We were very excited for Jacob's future, but realized he was going to have to mature a great deal before anything like this would happen," they said. "Unfortunately, he met the people who brought this computer fraud scheme to Tucson in his chat room. By the time he figured out what really was going on, it was too late."
Upon his release from prison, Green-Bressler will serve three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution to the victim banks and forfeit property used to commit the crimes as well as the proceeds of the offenses, a news release said.
