Detectives think gift card bust just the tip of the iceberg

DULUTH, Ga. — Gwinnett County investigators say they have uncovered an elaborate operation involving hundreds of fraudulent debit and prepaid gift cards encoded with stolen account information.

Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh talked with the detectives Friday who told her one of the suspects was visiting several Kroger locations on a daily basis to buy cigarettes and gift cards, but he was paying with stolen accounts.

The catch was he always swiped his own Kroger Plus card, police said.

Gwinnett Detective Larry Fazenbaker said he's seized close to 1,000 fraudulent gift cards and prepaid debit cards.

The debit cards are tied to stolen accounts, and the gift cards were purchased with those stolen accounts, police said.

Fazenbaker said the investigation began when he got a call from Kroger about a regular customer.

Police identified the man from surveillance photo as Sulton Ali.

"He would come in almost on a daily basis, usually one or two locations in Gwinnett County," Fazenbaker said.

Police said Ali frequented several DeKalb County Krogers as well as always buying a carton of cigarettes and gift cards on someone else's dime.

Officers said the Ali investigation led them to Nikunj Patel.

They believe Ali was working for him, and they said all of their evidence was discovered in their two homes.

"They would actually use these machines, hook 'em up to a computer," Fazenbaker said.

Fazenbaker showed Kavanaugh devices he said both erase and re-encode cards with the stolen account information.

The big question, police said, is how Ali and Patel obtain the stolenaccounts. Police said that is still under investigation.

But Fazenbaker told Kavanaugh many of the accounts came from customers at the same bank.

"The majority of the last month or two has been Bank of America," Fazenbaker said.

Police said the total loss just on the cigarettes is $42,000.

Investigators believe Ali may have been selling up north where cigarettes cost more.

Fazenbaker said they are still estimating the total loss from the cards.

Police are scanning each card and reading the information to try to identify who the accounts belong to.

WSBTV