A father and son crime duo was finally sentenced recently. Kenneth Cervellin, 62, and his 47-year-old son, Ronald Cervellin, were both convicted of defrauding nearly 1,200 merchants by fraudulently debiting their accounts without their consent. All in all, they bilked the merchants out of around $125,000.
The Cervellin men ran a business in Sacramento called NorCal CSI. The business acted as an independent sales agent representing a credit card processing company. After amassing 1,200 of these paying merchant customers, NorCal CSI began charging between 400 to 500 of these merchants $25 fees each month without their knowledge or their consent. They kept the amounts charged to the accounts small and rotated which merchants were charged each month in an attempt to avoid arousing the suspicion of the merchants.
If a merchant did happen to notice the charge and question it, the father-son team refunded the money immediately by mailing out the customer a refund check for the amount. They also sent out a letter explaining that the item was charged to the account erroneously, claiming it was placed on the statement due to computer error.
At any rate, once a client raised an eyebrow to the charge, the father and son then marked the file to make sure that particular client wasn’t charged again, another attempt to avoid raising suspicion.
The son got himself in trouble because he maintained and doctored the spreadsheets in an attempt to cover up the fraud. He also signed the refund checks that were sent to the clients and “made false statements” to an FBI agent.
Whether you’re a merchant that processes credit cards or just a consumer like me, you’ve really got to keep an eye on your statements and monitor your credit diligently to protect yourself from mail fraud, identity theft, and guys like this.
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