2 court updates: Pedestrian-crash case; credit-card-skimming fraud

gavel.jpgTwo court-case updates with local links: First, the West Seattle woman accused of drunkenly running her car into people outside Showbox SODO on October 28th has pleaded not guilty. Juanita Wright was in court Monday to answer four charges of vehicular assault; prosecutors say her blood-alcohol level was .29. Wright remains jailed in lieu of a quarter-million dollars bail, and is scheduled to return to court on December 13th.

Meantime, court documents reveal a West Seattle link in the case against two men who prosecutors say “allegedly plac(ed) skimming devices on local bank ATMs to steal data from the magnetic strips of customer debit and credit cards.” While no West Seattle skimming is alleged in the current charges against Claudiu Tudor and Mihai Podaru, the charges say Tudor used a stolen card number (after trying unsuccessfully to use another) to withdraw cash from the BECU ATM at Roxbury Safeway – not far from where he lives in White Center. Prosecutors say the numbers were skimmed from a machine in Renton, where the two men are suspected of skimming more than 50 cards, using them for more than $170,000 worth of fraud. They are charged with 1st-degree theft, identity theft, and improperly obtaining financial information; both remain jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail, awaiting arraignment one week from today, and prosecutors say a third suspect is still under investigation, as are possible crimes that the documents say may result in “hundreds of additional counts of identity theft.”

1 Reply to "2 court updates: Pedestrian-crash case; credit-card-skimming fraud"

  • Manimal November 16, 2010 (1:35 pm)

    Why don’t they use their ATM cards to bail out?

Sorry, comment time is over.