Overview
- The brothers, Marian Ovidiu Dumitru and Catalin Dumitru, pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Thursday, July 2, 2026, in federal court in the Western District of North Carolina.
- Court records say the group operated from July 2024 to August 2025 and stole more than $760,000 in SNAP benefits from accounts in New Jersey, Massachusetts and other states.
- Investigators say the ring used skimming devices at ATMs, gas pumps and other points of sale to copy EBT card data, then loaded that data onto counterfeit magnetic‑strip cards.
- The counterfeit cards were used to buy bulk goods for resale, including over $15,600 at a Gastonia warehouse club and over $19,000 at a Pineville location, and the scheme victimized more than 10 SNAP recipients.
- Both men are undocumented Romanian citizens who face up to 20 years in prison and possible restitution, and the case was prosecuted by the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division with credit to HSI, USDA OIG, the NC SBI and other partners.