Life in prison for credit card skimming

TYLER – The Houston Chronicle reports that Edward Estrada’s client already had admitted to skimming — installing devices inside gas pumps to steal customers’ credit card information. But the Tyler lawyer wanted to make sure jurors understood that it didn’t rank with more serious financial crimes. As he prepared for the 2019 sentencing hearing, Estrada settled on a comparison. His client wasn’t nearly as bad as Enron, the giant Houston energy company whose executives misled investors for years, he stressed. While his client’s crimes cost victims collectively more than $150,000 — much of it reimbursed by banks — Enron lost billions. The Smith County jury apparently took the differences into account, but not in the way Estrada hoped. Enron executives faced sentences of 45 and 24 years. For his skimming, the jury sentenced Felipe Manuel Nieves-Perez to life in prison — “striking and alarming,” Estrada said.

The sentence wasn’t an outlier. In recent years, East Texas skimmers have received prison terms more commonly associated with violent criminals who commit murder or sexual assault. Jorge Rondon-Martinez was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his skimming crimes. Nelson Fernandez-Lopez received 45 years. Duniesky Gonzalez got 50. Yoelvis Herrera, 65. In addition to Nieves-Perez, at least two other men in Smith County — Fabrizio Slatineanu and Yoerlan Suarez-Corrales — have received sentences of life in prison for credit card skimming. Local law enforcement have trumpeted the stiff punishments as justice done right — an aggressive response to a problem that needed concentrated attention. Responding to a rash of local incidents, Smith County officials pushed for tough new state laws. A committed local prosecutor used them vigorously. And a new state-funded financial crimes center located in Tyler helped.