BANGOR, Maine — A Florida man pleaded guilty Friday to manufacturing fake credit cards to illegally purchase more than $50,000 in goods in eight Maine counties in January, according to U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II.
Roberto Lueje-Rodriguez, 29, of Florida pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Bangor to access device fraud and aggravated identity theft, Delahanty said in a statement released Friday.
Court records show that between Jan. 7 and Jan. 13, Lueje-Rodriguez and another man, Ariel Perez-Calvo, used debit and credit card account numbers belonging to Maine bank customers to make more than $50,000 in unauthorized purchases in Penobscot, Knox, Hancock, Piscataquis, Franklin, Somerset, Kennebec and Androscoggin counties, Delahanty said.
Each debit card account number was unique and assigned to one person or, in one instance, to a Maine company. The fake cards resembled authentic debit or credit cards and encoded with true account numbers. The name on the cards was “David Cuan,” which was not the name of any of the true account holders, Delahanty said.
The defendant faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the access device fraud and a mandatory minimum period of imprisonment of 2 years for aggravated identity theft. He will also be ordered to pay restitution. He will be sentenced after the U.S. Probation Office completes a pre-sentence investigation report, Delahanty said.