Miami Residents Sentenced for Their Roles in a Money Laundering Conspiracy Connected to a Nationwide Gas Station Skimming Scheme

ALBANY, NEW YORK – Yanio Montes de Oca, age 35, of Miami, Florida, was sentenced on Tuesday to 27 months in prison, and Atnetys Ferreira Milian, age 42, of Miami, was sentenced today to 1 year of probation, for their respective roles in a conspiracy to commit money laundering. The announcement was made by United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman; Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and Ketty Larco-Ward, Postal Inspector in Charge of the Boston Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).

As part of his guilty plea on March 10, 2021, De Oca admitted to being a part of a conspiracy that, between December 2015 and July 2019, laundered thousands of gift cards that were obtained using fraudulent debit and credit cards encoded with information stolen using gas station skimming devices. After obtaining the gift cards from co-conspirators, De Oca sold them on a gift card exchange website using a “bulk seller” account he established in the name of a Florida company he created in 2015 for that purpose.  After selling the fraudulently obtained gift cards, De Oca transferred the resulting amounts to bank accounts he controlled.  De Oca then distributed some of the money he obtained through gift card sales to other conspirators, retaining the rest of the funds for himself. As part of his plea agreement, De Oca agreed to be subject to a forfeiture money judgment in the amount of $1,020,193.10.

As part of her guilty plea on December 6, 2019, Ferreira Milian admitted to being a part of the same conspiracy and using multiple bank accounts that she controlled to launder money orders that had been purchased with fraudulent debit cards.  The debit cards used stolen account numbers that had been skimmed at gas station pumps across the country.  During the period of the conspiracy, Ferreira Milian deposited over 1,100 money orders, totaling over $691,000, into her accounts, and then withdrew most of the laundered funds in cash.  As part of her plea agreement, Ferreira Milian agreed to be subject to a forfeiture money judgment in the amount of $49,162.00. 

Senior United States District Judge Gary L. Sharpe also imposed on Montes de Oca a 3-year term of supervised to follow the term of incarceration. 

These cases were investigated by the FBI Albany Field Office and USPIS Boston Division, with assistance from the FBI Field Offices in Miami and Pittsburgh, the USPIS Miami Division, and the United States Secret Service Miami Field Office.  The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Belliss.