A 911 call from an eagle-eyed 7-Eleven owner led to a band of Romanian ATM thieves getting busted in St. Louis, according to a search warrant unsealed June 13.
On May 28, 2024, prosecutors say, Mihai F. Marinescu and Nelu Nae entered the convenience store on Morganford Road in Tower Grove South and, according to surveillance footage, Nae kept lookout while Marinescu installed what’s called a skimming device on the cash machine in the back of the store. After the two men then left, the owner, seemingly sensing something sketchy had occurred, called the police.
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That 911 call ultimately led to the arrests of five Romanian nationals, who have since pleaded guilty to bank fraud and will be sentenced later this summer. Their scheme operated out of an Airbnb in Benton Park West and a house in Florissant. Prosecutors say the crew had previously installed skimming devices on three other ATMs in St. Louis County, as well as placed cameras nearby to covertly record ATM users entering their PINs. Court filings don’t say how much money the crew stole before getting busted, though they indicate it exceeds $5,000.
When police responded to the 7-Eleven on May 28, Marinescu and Nae had already left, but police found in the ATM a thin piece of metal powered by a small battery that captured the magnetic strip of debit cards when inserted into the machine—an ATM skimmer—as well as a camera positioned to record the ATM’s keypad. Use of these skimming devices is relatively rare, but it is becoming more common. In 2023, around 315,000 people in the U.S. had their debit card information stolen via such a device, more than double the year before.
Later that same day, on May 28, two St. Louis police detectives were headed back to the 7-Eleven to collect additional surveillance footage when the owner again called police, saying that two other men were at the store, apparently trying to retrieve the skimmer. Realizing it was no longer there, they took off in a Volkswagen sedan.
Police tailed the Volkswagen into Maplewood, where they pulled the car over. Inside the sedan were Ianus Nita and Mihai Vlaicu, who gave his name as Tibor Biro and showed officers a Hungarian ID card that also later proved to be fake. The men said they were traveling from Texas to Chicago and were staying at a hotel in St. Louis, though neither could say which hotel.
Police let the two men go on their way. But then, using the Real Time Crime Center cameras and license plate readers, they determined the Volkswagen was parked in front of a house in Benton Park West. This house was listed on Airbnb and, contrary to the men’s story of passing through town, it had been rented for the better part of May under the name Tibor Biro.
Police later obtained a search warrant for the men’s phone records and found the devices were frequently used at a house in Florissant, which court records suggest is another Airbnb the crew had started renting near the end of May. A search of that house turned up, among other things, multiple skimming devices, USB cables to extract data from the skimmers, $5,840 in $20 bills, and a camera device that can be placed onto an ATM. A laptop had videos of hundreds of people entering their ATM codes.
The raid on the Florissant house proved to be the end to several months’ worth of the skimming scheme. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Vlaicu and Marinescu placed skimmers on ATMs in Clayton and Frontenac in January 2024. They allegedly used the debit card information of at least six people to make cloned cards that the crew then used to withdraw cash. Prosecutors say they tried unsuccessfully to install a skimming device in South County on May 2, but installed one successfully in Wildwood one week later.
It was when they hit the south city 7-Eleven with the sharp-eyed owner that their scheme ran aground.
Vlaicu (aka Tibor Biro), Marinescu, Nae, as well as two others, Venera-Isabelle Dumitru and Laurentiu-Miguel Ivan, who were at the Florissant house when police raided it, have all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Ivan will be sentenced next Wednesday, with Dumitru, Nae, Marinescu, and Vlaicu to follow. Ianus Nita, the person in the car with Vlaicu on May 28, remains at large.
