A Brazilian duo arrested in Iowa in connection with planting skimming devices there is accused of stealing card information from 209 customers at a southeast Lincoln ATM in April, according to court documents.
Staff at the Union Bank and Trust branch across from SouthPointe Pavilions on South 27th Street found the skimming device and a pinhole camera on the drive-thru ATM on April 26, Lincoln Police Investigator Donald Fosler said in a police report.
His report accusing Evaldo Da Silva, 40, and Jamily Silva-Sousa, 26, of theft and unlawful manufacturing of a financial transaction device sheds new light on the case, which police had kept under wraps.
Police, sheriff and bank officials gave few specifics about the case when they first spoke publicly about the skimming in May, saying only that officers took 44 reports related to the case, and Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said his office took two more.Â
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The case was connected to Omaha, they said.
Fosler's report said surveillance video from the bank showed an unknown man and woman installing and removing the skimming devices 11 times between April 14 and April 26.
Skimming devices are attached to ATMs and gas pump credit card readers so criminals can capture bank card numbers and PIN information, create new cards and steal money from the account holders.
The bank determined 209 accounts had been compromised during that nearly two-week stretch, and those compromised accounts were used without permission 42 times at 13 ATMs in Omaha between May 13 and May 14, Fosler said.
More than $71,000 was withdrawn in Omaha from those accounts by the same couple captured on surveillance video, he said.
Police sent out the images of the suspects to law enforcement in the region to help identify them, and on June 5, a West Des Moines, Iowa, detective said he was investigating the same suspects for similar frauds in the days after the Omaha ATM transactions, Fosler said.
Da Silva and Silva-Sousa were arrested in Clive, another Des Moines suburb, on June 15 in the West Des Moines case.
Officers found more than $263,000 in cash in their suitcases and numerous credit cards, Fosler said.
The two matched the images captured on Union Bank surveillance video, he said.
Prosecutors Friday charged them and a judge issued warrants for their arrests.
They remained in the Polk County jail Tuesday in Des Moines pending extradition to Nebraska.
Union Bank and Trust spokesman Kevin Keller in May said the bank contacted the affected customers and reissued their cards.
"The amount of any unauthorized transactions is paid by the bank, so customers are not impacted financially," he said in an email.