LEE COUNTY, Fla. -- Southwest Florida law enforcement busted 4 men in two separate credit card schemes.
According to the Lee County Sheriff's Office, detectives with the Lee County Sheriff's Office Highway Interdiction Unit conducted a traffic stop Wednesday on a Mercedes Benz along I-75. The men in the car, 21-year-old Jorge Antonio Cruz Cepero and 19-year-old Yariel Ernesto La Rosa Mena, claimed that they were traveling from Miami and heading home to Tampa.
An odor of marijuana was emitting from the vehicle, and a drug interdiction canine was utilized and alerted detectives to the presence of marijuana.
During a search, detectives located several credit cards that had outward indicators of being counterfeit. The information encoded on the magnetic strips of the credit cards had other individuals information encoded on them, as well as different banking institutions. 176 blank credit cards were also located that had not yet been embossed or encoded.
Cruz Cepero and La Rosa Mena’s criminal histories showed prior arrests for credit card fraud in Missouri and Georgia. La Rosa Mena is currently on felony probation in Hillsborough County for credit card fraud.
In Collier County, another pair of Miami men were arrested after being caught with stolen credit cards Wednesday. Deputies confiscated 7 cards from Edgar Alfonso and Felix Hernandez.
Both men were taken into custody after being pulled over on I-75. They told deputies they took the cards from a gas station in Miami.
