On Sunday, September 10, 2017 at 10:22 p.m., Beaumont Police responded to Gators West, located at 2890 Dowlen Road, in reference to a suspicious person call. A witness was observing two subjects possibly tampering with a gas pump at this location. When Officers arrived, they found 33 year old Carlos Garcia and 35 year old Alfredo Almaguer-Almira to be actively tampering with a gas pump. Garcia and Almaguer-Almira were also found to be in possession of a credit card skimmer, as well as multiple prepaid VISA cards. Detectives were notified and responded to the scene to continue the investigation. That evening, Garcia and Almaguer-Almira were both arrested for Fraud- Use/Possession of Identifying Information and transported to the Jefferson County Jail.
During the course of the investigation, BPD Detectives worked with U.S. Secret Service Agents to determine how much information was on the gas pump skimmer that was confiscated from the suspects. It was learned that the skimmer held account information from 258 different credit cards, which had a potential loss of 1.3 million dollars, had the suspects not been caught by Police that evening. The case was worked by BPD Detectives and U.S. Secret Service and brought before a Federal Grand Jury in October of 2018, in which both suspects were indicted. However, prior to the indictment, both suspects had bonded out of the Jefferson County Jail and fled the country.
In January of 2019, one of the suspects flew into Miami International Airport as he returned to the U.S. from Cuba and was taken into Federal custody for his outstanding warrant.
This was a great job by the citizen who saw something suspicious and reported it, the patrol officers who quickly responded to the scene and apprehended the suspects and the detectives who worked the complex case!