Brooklyn Duo Nabbed for $100,000 EZPass Scam

March 30, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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Feds are accusing Rana Khandakar and Usawan Saelim of swindling $100,000 in a scheme whereby they allegedly bought EZPass tags with stolen credit cards and then flipped them to Internet bargain shoppers at a discount, according to the Daily News.

The suspects, both 27 and from Brooklyn, allegedly ran a pair of websites, drezpass.com and ezpasstag.com, that they used to resell ill-gotten EZPass tags at cushy rates—$300 tags for $250 and $170 tags for $150, as reported by the News.

According to the federal complaint, their operation racked up $100,000 in EZPass charges since July, using 900 accounts that were connected to the stolen information of 50 American Express cards.

The EZPass con is just one facet of what feds say was an attempted $6-million dollar credit card fraud scheme, which included numerous phony online merchant accounts that the alleged scam artists used to pilfer credit card info.

According to the complaint, the duo successfully charged at least $4 million, using their bounty to buy a Mercedes-Benz, pet insurance and thrice-daily takeout meals, among other things, as reported by Forbes.

Both defendants are accused of one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to Forbes. The maximum sentence for their charges is 9 ½ years.