A man wanted in his home country of Moldova was found to be in unlawful possession of 131 credit cards that didn’t match his identity following a traffic stop on the Indiana Toll Road in Porter County this past weekend.
Anatolie Cataraga, 41, who lives in Philadelphia, is charged with two Level 5 felonies of fraud on a financial institution and identity deception, because he is accused of having a passport under a false name. He also faces three Level 6 felony fraud charges and a single Level 6 felony count of unlawful possession of a card skimming device.
It all began just after 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon when a Hobart Police officer, working on assignment for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), observed an eastbound car with a dark window tint following dangerously close to a semi-truck by the 36-mile marker on I-90.
The Hobart police officer pulled the vehicle over at the 40-mile marker. The Russian-speaking driver identified himself as Constantin Catana with a Moldova government card. He didn’t speak English well, so the officer used a translator device and asked permission to search the vehicle, which was granted.
During the search of the vehicle, the officer observed unusual wear and tear near the center air vent on the dash. The officer removed the vent and found a black satchel, according to the probable cause statement filed in Porter County Superior Court.
Within that satchel, there were 120 poor quality credit cards and a wallet that contained three passports — two from Moldova and one from the neighboring Romania in Eastern Europe. The two passports had different names: one for Cataraga — established as his true identity — and the other for Constantin Catana. All three passports had the same picture, according to the court record.
Cataraga and the vehicle were brought to the Hobart Police station, where they were met later that afternoon by Special Agent Zachary Ashbrook of the U.S. Secret Service. At the Hobart Police station, it was learned that INTERPOL had an active warrant for Cataraga out of Moldova.
Ashbrook observed that there were 131 access device cards with different identities than Cataraga.
Using an electronic swipe card reader, Ashbrook scanned 130 of the access device cards and found none of them contained information matching that which was on the card. However, each card was associated with institutions insured by the FDIC. Additionally, four-digit codes were found written on the back of the device cards that were consistent with the pins for the number of each card.
Ashbrook stated that the devices discovered in Cataraga’s vehicle were consistent with card skimming devices that are placed on or over card swipes in order to obtain a person’s identifying information and card information.
The cards in Cataraga’s possession were re-coded cards commonly used in identity theft and fraud cases, the court record says.
Jim Woods is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.