While the popular motto of “it’s worth the trip” might be true for Dunkin’ Donuts customers, two Romanian national’s will be serving up to three years in prison for their trips to an ATM machine at a Chase Bank in Queens.
According to the office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, the defendants, Daniel Gheorghe and Ionel Cristian Popa, both in the United States on journalism visas, were each sentenced for stealing more than $17,700 from the Chase branch in Hollis last year.
The pair quickly performed multiple unauthorized withdrawals at the bank’s ATMs by using scores of Dunkin’ Donut gift cards that had been re-encoded with stolen bank account information.
Brown quipped that the men should have used the cards to buy coffee and donuts instead of the prison time they bought instead.
Gheorghe and Popa were observed by police in the vestibule of the Chase bank branch rapidly performing multiple unauthorized transactions at the bank’s ATMs using Dunkin’ Donuts rechargeable gift cards with information belonging to various banks––including Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, Maestro, Nuvision Federal Credit Unit and US Bank National Association.
Following each transaction, the defendants jammed large amounts of cash––mostly twenty- dollar bills –– in the pockets of their clothing. Arresting officers seized $17,703 in stolen funds and 66 Dunkin’ Donut gift cards from the defendants’ persons and from their vehicle.
Also from the DA’s office this week came news of the conviction of a 26-year-old construction worker from Howard Beach, for first-degree gang assault and other charges for an August 2009 attack on an off-duty police officer during a traffic dispute.
Joseph J. Meyer, 26, of 153-37 78th Street was convicted following a six-day jury trial before Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Joseph A. Zayas. According to trial testimony, Meyer and several unapprehended others assaulted off- duty police officer Damien Bartels by punching and kicking him multiple times about the head following a traffic dispute in the Long Island City section of Queens during the early morning hours of August 30, 2009.
Bartels was treated for a shattered nose, two broken eye sockets, a broken jaw and shifted teeth. He underwent an eleven-hour surgery which was followed by a second surgery required to repair his septum because of difficulty he had in breathing. He has since returned to the NYPD.
The off-duty cop was in his 2009 Lincoln MKS with his girlfriend, Jennifer Menjivar and his cousin Richard Sacco who was in the back seat. They were at a red light behind several other cars and when the light changed a group of people standing in front of the car failed to clear the intersection. A verbal altercation took place between Sacco and some of the people standing at the intersection before the beating occurred approximately one block away at the intersection of 30th Street and 48th Avenue.
In a written statement, Meyer admitted to being in an altercation on the date of the incident and at the LIC location of an assault involving two men and a woman in a black Lincoln. Meyer faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on December 19, 2011.