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Davidson Gilot, 26, of Spring Valley was running “a complex scam” from the hotel room – but was sniffed out after he tried to pay for an additional night with the stolen card, Chief James N. Batelli said.
Gilot bought legitimate credit card numbers off the dark web and stole other numbers, all of which he entered into a credit card reader “to identify an individual's name and information associated with those numbers,” the chief said.
Gilot coded the information onto the magnetic strips on the back of blank cards, then used a separate machine to imprint the numbers and a phony number on the front, Batelli said.
Besides the scanning and pressing machines, he said, township police found 10 blank credit cards from different banks and credit card institutions, bogus driver’s licenses from New Jersey and Ohio – that the chief said he could use to match the cards if he was asked for ID -- and a small amount of marijuana.
Gilot gave the desk clerk one of those fake IDs when he checked in the night before, Batelli added.
“Merchants in the United States lose a staggering $190 billion a year in credit card fraud schemes like this,” he noted.
The items were seized and Gilot was processed and released under New Jersey’s 2017 bail reform law pending a July 27 detention hearing in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.
He’s charged with exhibiting a fraudulent driver's license, forgery and possession of two or more credit card blanks, a credit scanning device, a credit card press, a small amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Detective Sgt. Kevin Hebert and Detective Michael Grassi were continuing the investigation with other law enforcement agencies and financial institutions, the chief said.
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