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TYLER \u2013 According to our news partner KETK, a Romanian national was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday after he was found guilty of engaging in organized criminal activity in Smith County. Fabrizio Slatineanu reportedly entered America illegally from Mexico and was caught taking part in a credit card skimming scheme where he stole over $280,000 from Smith County residents in a single weekend, according to the 114th District Court.<\/p>\n
During the sentencing hearing, multiple victims testified about how they had lost thousands of dollars from their savings accounts. During the hearing, Captain Jeff Roberts, a member of the Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center, testified about how Romanian organized crime played an increased role in types of financial crimes similar to Slatineanu\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
Roberts also said he thinks open borders have helped to increase these kinds of crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpen borders have made this a transnational problem,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cThese criminals don\u2019t come here and work normal business hours. They have come here to steal your money.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the sentencing, Judge Jackson revealed that Slatineanu had already been deported twice from the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are tired of scams, they are tired of thieves, and they are tired of people crossing our borders illegally and harming our hardworking friends and neighbors,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TYLER \u2013 According to our news partner KETK, a Romanian national was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday after he was found guilty of engaging in organized criminal activity in Smith County. Fabrizio Slatineanu reportedly entered America illegally from Mexico and was caught taking part in a credit card skimming scheme where he stole … Continue reading Romanian gets life for skimming scheme in ETX<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1390510,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/02\/2025-02-14_063042-201x200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1390507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 12:47:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/02\/2025-02-14_063042-201x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1390507"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390831,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390507\/revisions\/1390831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1390510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1390507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1390507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1390507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}