Man Sentenced for ID Theft & Fraud Spree Targeting Eastman CU Members

Yanier Tellez and Lazaro Martinez rented a car in Tampa, Fla., and drove to eastern Tennessee where they went on a month-long identity theft spree that caused nearly $40,000 in losses for the $7.6 billion Eastman Credit Union in Kingsport.

When ECU detected the fraudulent transactions in 2017, it triggered an investigation by local, county and federal law enforcement authorities that led to the arrest and conviction of Tellez and Martinez.

After pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, U.S. District Court Judge Clifton L. Corker in Greenville, Tenn., sentenced Tellez on Sept. 29 to 70 months in prison and ordered him to pay $39,899 in restitution to ECU. Martinez, who previously pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for the Tennessee crimes. He was also sentenced to 51 months in prison in Florida for additional identity theft offenses.

Federal prosecutors did not explain in court documents why they traveled more than 700 miles to commit these crimes or why Tellez and Martinez targeted members of Tennessee’s largest credit union.

But once they arrived in the Volunteer State, they used one or more skimming devices installed at unidentified machines in retail stores to surreptitiously collect account numbers and personal identifying information of ECU members.

Once Tellez and Martinez obtained the account numbers and other information from the skimming devices, they re-encoded that information onto magnetic-stripe cards such as prepaid gift cards and used the fake cards to steal cash, money orders and gift cards at local ATM machines and local point-of-sale terminals throughout Eastern Tennessee. Store surveillance footage captured them committing their crimes, including footage from local Walgreens, CVS and Kroger stores. Tellez and Martinez also re-encoded debit and credit cards that allowed them to steal thousands from member accounts, according to prosecutors.

While he was driving back to Florida, Tellez was stopped for a traffic violation in Lee County when police found thumb drives containing more than 300 account numbers and corresponding member information. According to court records, the average yield for each compromised account number was over $1,400 in fraudulent transactions. Tellez also had a counterfeit gift card in his wallet that contained the account information of a resident of Greeneville, Tenn., who was an ECU member.