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Five members of an organized network, including Cubans, were sentenced to prison for their involvement in a sophisticated scheme of fraud with credit cards and money laundering for over 3.5 million dollars in South Florida, authorities reported on Tuesday.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office for the Southern District of Florida announced the sentencing of five members of the criminal organization, which generated over $3.5 million in fraudulent charges through the manipulation of point-of-sale systems, stolen credit cards, and phantom companies.
Willan Pupo, a 38-year-old Cuban, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison; Joel Castillo, 39, received a sentence of four years and 10 months; William Castillo (42) was sentenced to four years and seven months in prison; Miriam Pupo (Cuban, 36 years old) to three years and one month, and Jessica Forpomes (40) to three years.
Each of them had previously pleaded guilty to committing money laundering.
The accused orchestrated a large-scale fraud scheme involving credit cards and money laundering, from at least February 2023 to June 2024, according to court records.
To implement their plans, they used legitimate businesses and shell companies to acquire point-of-sale (POS) devices from commercial processors, which enabled them to conduct transactions with credit and debit cards and transfer funds to accounts under their control.
The Prosecutor's Office revealed that the defendants carried out fraudulent transactions using the POS devices through three methods.
First, they used credit cards from partners to generate fraudulent purchases of goods and services that were never provided. Those partners subsequently disputed the charges to obtain refunds.
In a second modus operandi, the group members purchased numbers of stolen credit cards on the dark web and through encrypted messaging platforms, such as Telegram, and used them to process unauthorized transactions.
A third type of fraud involved using stolen credit cards from the mail to make additional fraudulent purchases.
Once the fraudulent transactions were processed, the accused would quickly transfer or withdraw the funds from the associated bank accounts to prevent the processors from discovering them.
According to court documents, after the victims reported the fraudulent charges, the credit card issuers reversed the transactions, allowing the merchant processors and financial institutions to absorb the losses.
But the network went even further to achieve its objectives. The accused, William Castillo, Willan Pupo, and Joel Castillo accessed a database that contained extensive personal identification information, including names, aliases, dates of birth, social security numbers, addresses, and other confidential data.
All that information was used to identify and exploit the victims, allowing them to activate stolen credit cards and accelerate their fraudulent activities, the Prosecutor's Office explained.
Authorities indicated that, in addition to the credit card fraud scheme, Willan Pupo and Joel Castillo admitted to using shell companies to fraudulently obtain disaster loans for economic damages, thanks to which they received over $650,000 in profits.
The announcement also revealed that as part of their efforts to recover what was stolen, Joel and William Castillo have paid more than $800,000 to date.
The federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, stated that the members of the network "exploited legitimate businesses, abused financial systems, and shifted losses onto banks and processors" and asserted that large-scale frauds like this undermine trust in financial markets.
Reding warned that "those who build criminal enterprises based on deception and data theft will face serious federal prison sentences."
The first arrests related to this case occurred in July 2024. During a raid by the United States Secret Service at a house in Pembroke Pines, in Broward County, Willan Pupo and Joel Castillo were detained on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud with access devices, electronic fraud, and money laundering, according to a report by Telemundo 51.
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