A pinhole camera at the ATM, and $177,280 gone
Florin Nicolae Tarta, a 40-year-old Romanian national, was sentenced on 10 September 2025 to six years and nine months in federal prison for installing skimming devices and a pinhole camera on Bank of America ATMs in Chicago, then expanding to New Jersey. He and two co-defendants captured card data and PINs, encoded the data onto counterfeit gift cards, and withdrew cash before New Jersey police caught Tarta retrieving a camera he had planted.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $177,280
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Card skimming
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-10
The facts, as recorded
- Florin Nicolae Tarta, 40, of Romania, was convicted by a jury of bank fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.
- He was sentenced on 10 September 2025 to six years and nine months in federal prison.
- Co-defendants Leonid Grigore Smetanca, 45, of Romania, and Radu Farcas, 42, of England, received three-and-a-half years and two-and-a-half years respectively.
- The group installed a metallic plate skimming device with a card reader, memory chip and battery inside Bank of America ATM card slots in Chicago's Near North Side, Dunning and Woodridge, Illinois, from around October to November 2023, then expanded to New Jersey by January 2024.
- Tarta placed a pinhole camera near an ATM keypad in Westfield, New Jersey to record customers entering their PINs.
- The group retrieved the devices days later, used a computer to encode the stolen data onto the magnetic stripes of gift cards, and withdrew cash.
- Total losses from the scheme were $177,280.
- New Jersey police found the hidden camera in March 2024 and arrested Tarta when he returned to retrieve it, finding several $100 bills he dropped during the arrest.
- Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Hayes: "Card-skimming is a widespread problem plaguing financial institutions and consumers."
Why this case matters
Skimming is the one scheme on this site that requires no phone call, text or email, the victim does nothing wrong at all. They insert a card into a slot the way they always have. Tarta’s case shows the two halves of a device-based scheme working together: a skimmer for the card data, and a pinhole camera for the PIN, which is what actually lets stolen data become cash rather than just a cloneable card number.
Caught retrieving his own device
Skimming has a structural weak point every version of this scheme shares: the device has to be installed and then retrieved, and the retrieval is when a criminal is physically present at the scene of the crime. Tarta was arrested returning to collect the camera he had planted, the same pattern seen across almost every skimming prosecution on this site.
The caveat
Tarta was convicted at trial and sentenced; this is a concluded case. His co-defendants’ sentences reflect their own pleas and roles in the same conspiracy.
Sources
- Man sentenced in card skimming plot totaling more than $170,000 in Illinois, New Jersey. Chicago Sun-Times. Accessed 2026-09-10. Supports: The defendants' names, ages and nationalities, the sentences, the charges, the $177,280 total, the ATM locations, the pinhole camera, the gift-card encoding method, the March 2024 arrest, and the Hayes quote.