Three Romanian nationals, arrested earlier this year by Romanian police and extradited to the US on charges of internet based fraud, appeared in court in New York last week. It is the latest step in the USD 2 million international cyber fraud case in which money was conned out of US citizens using bogus adverts for cars, boats, motorcycles and other high value goods on sites such as eBay.

Cristea Mircea (30), Ion Pieptea (36), and Nicolae Simion (37) appeared before United States District Judge Edward R. Korman on May 2. “Each defendant is charged with conspiracy to commit substantives offenses against the United States, wire fraud, and money laundering. The defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment on each count of conviction,” reads the notice from the US Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York.

The indictment filed with the court alleges that the three defendants put detailed adverts on sites such as eBay.com, Cars.com, AutoTrader.com, and CycleTrader.com for high-end cars and motorbikes, boats and other luxury goods, generally priced between USD 10,000 and USD 45,000. The goods were pure fiction and never existed, the adverts simply being a way to extort money, the prosecution alleges. Victims were sent fake documents of ownership for the fictitious goods and later invoices that appeared to come from payment sites such as PayPal. All the information was designed “to lure the victims into parting with their money. Sometimes, they pretended to sell cars from non-existent auto dealerships in the United States and even created phony websites for these fictitious dealerships,” reads the court release.

Back in December 2012, a coordinated operation that involved law enforcement officers in Romania, the Czech Republic, the UK and Canada, acting at the request of the US authorities, arrested six Romanians, including Mircea, Pieptea and Simion. The Bucharest Appeals Court ordered the extraditions of Mircea, Pieptea, and Simion on February 2, this year. The defendants were taken to the Eastern District of New York and arraigned on March 27, 2013. The court document reports that one of the defendants was recorded boasting that there would be no extradition of Romanians to the US. “Criminals will not be extradited from Romania to the U.S.A....[I]t will never happen,” said one of the suspects.

editor@romania-insider.com

photo source: justice.gov