Final Plymouth Gas Skimmer Defendant Gets Prison Time

The last of the gas pump skimmer defendants pleaded guilty to identity theft involving more than eight people, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced Wednesday.

Sarkis Mkhsyan, who turns 30 this week, pleaded guilty Friday and was immediately sentenced to 62 months in prison and full restitution. Mkhsyan, of Van Nuys, Calif., also pleaded guilty to five counts of unlawful possession or use of a scanning device.

Mkhsyan was combative during his hearing, at times refusing to admit to the specifics of the crime, saying it didn’t matter because he was guilty.

“This was a sophisticated operation and there is some evidence this is part of a gas pump skimming operation that stretches from California to at least Minnesota,” Freeman said. “This was good work by the Plymouth Police Department and our two prosecutors to obtain a guilty verdict and plea and put them in prison for many years, as well as get them each to pay restitution to the people whose identities they stole. This should also send a warning to criminals from other states who are thinking about coming to Minnesota to prey on our citizens: your stay here might be a lot longer than you expected.”

Mkhsyan and his wife, Gohar Yesayan, were stopped for speeding by Plymouth Police officers early on July 6. Police eventually discovered a handwritten list of nearly 100 gas stations in the Twin Cities area in her purse, a flash drive with hundreds of names and credit card numbers and five keys for opening gas pumps.

Police went to a New Hope gasoline station and found homemade credit card skimmers inside six of the pumps. Every time a customer inserted a credit card into the legitimate reader at the pump, the skimmer also read and recorded the information. After the names and card numbers were retrieved from the skimmer they could be used, along with a re-encoder device, to create new fraudulent cards in the name of the defendants or others but using the victims’ credit card numbers. There was evidence that the re-encoded cards were used throughout the country.

Mkhsyan was scheduled to go on trial July 8, but after his wife was convicted by a Hennepin County jury in March and sentenced to 57 months in prison, Mkhsyan agreed to plead guilty.

(Information provided by a Hennepin County Attorney press release.)