By Conrad Dudderar
Associate Editor
EL RENO – An Oklahoma City man has pleaded guilty and received a deferred sentence in Canadian County for his role in a credit card skimming scheme.
Sergio Burrola Moreno, 54, was charged in October 2023 with 48 felony counts that included obtaining property by trick/deception and false personation.
Special Judge David H. Halley deferred sentencing for seven years after Moreno’s guilty plea at an April 17 hearing in Canadian County District Court.
“I presented several false credit cards to obtain fuel and falsely personated the individuals that have those card numbers,” Moreno’s signed guilty plea reads.
The defendant paid $16,344.15 in restitution and will be on unsupervised probation, according to the plea agreement.
The Multicounty Grand Jury in Oklahoma City last fall indicted Moreno and three other men for operating skimming devices in central Oklahoma that reportedly fleeced trucking companies and gasoline consumers out of thousands of dollars.
Assistant Attorney General Ricky Lutz said credit card skimming at gasoline pumps is a nationwide problem, but that Oklahoma has become a ripe target due to the heavy amount of trucking traffic through the state’s interstate system.
Moreno pleaded guilty to crimes that occurred between Feb. 16 and March 10, 2023, at Love’s Travel Stops and Casey’s General Store in Canadian County.
Moreno “with intent to cheat and defraud did obtain fuel” on 24 occasions from the Canadian County businesses “by use of trick or deception/false representation/false instrument,” according to the indictment signed by Grand Jury foreman Angela Fitzgerald.
The defendant falsely personated three individual victims by using their personal identification numbers and obtaining fuel multiple times as a result, court documents show.
During this investigation, skimming devices were found at gas stations in Oklahoma City, Choctaw, Newcastle, El Reno, and Seminole County.
Felony charges are pending in Oklahoma County District Court against Choctaw’s Reidel Valdes Montero, 38; Del City’s Jose Carlos Rizo, 38; and Miami, Fla.’s Jael Diaz-Morejon, 40.
Diaz-Morejon was charged with one count of possession of a skimming device and one count of conspiracy to commit a felony, Montero was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a felony and one count of obtaining property by trick/deception or false representation/pretense and Rizo was charged with two counts of obtaining property by trick/deception or false representation/pretense and one count of false personation.
Ten witnesses appeared before the Multicounty Grand Jury – members of the Oklahoma City Police Department and Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office, and representatives of Love’s Travel Stops, according to the indictment.
A RIPE TARGET
Authorities caught Diaz-Morejon in possession of skimming devices and other materials used for installing and reading skimming devices, which are used at gas pumps to read and copy credit card information.
In addition to capturing credit card data on skimmers, criminals often install small cameras to record information that consumers punch into gas pump keypads.
Credit card information is then used to create cloned or counterfeit cards that can be used to make fraudulent purchases.
Montero, Burrola and Rizo were caught using fraudulent cards at diesel gas pumps to fuel their trucks repeatedly over the course of several months.
