A Portland man pleaded guilty Tuesday to running a card-skimming scheme that drained more than $550,000 from public assistance benefits meant for struggling Oregon and Washington families. Andy Robert Perovici admitted to planting skimming devices at stores across the Portland metro area and in Salem, stealing SNAP and EBT card information from hundreds of recipients before cleaning out their benefits.
According to KOIN.com, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon says Perovici used skimming devices to steal card information at stores in Portland, Tigard, Lake Oswego and Salem. Hundreds of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients had their card numbers and PINs stolen over several months in 2025, the outlet reports.
Once Perovici and his co-conspirators had that stolen data in hand, prosecutors say they put it to work fast — buying goods, pulling cash from ATMs and tapping into benefit accounts without the cardholders' knowledge. Perovici pleaded guilty to federal charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, unauthorized use of access devices and aggravated identity theft, per the station's report. The aggravated identity theft charge alone carries a mandatory two-year prison term, though no sentencing date or final sentence for Perovici has been disclosed.
Part of a Much Bigger Oregon Crackdown
Perovici's case lands amid a sprawling federal effort to stamp out benefit-card fraud across the state. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon says at least 40 people are now facing federal charges in cases tied to more than $3 million in fraudulent SNAP purchases, according to a statement distributed via FlashAlert. Just last month, federal grand juries charged 10 additional people in cases involving stolen EBT numbers and PINs, with estimated losses of $143,000, KDRV reported.
These cases keep surfacing because skimming rings have targeted benefit recipients up and down the state. In one earlier case, a federal grand jury in Oregon charged 17 people in October 2024 in a scheme that stole more than $2.4 million in SNAP benefits, according to Gorge News Center. That operation allegedly funneled more than 120,000 pounds of goods bought with stolen benefits through storage in Oregon and Washington before shipping them to California to be sold on the black market, the outlet reported.
Other Defendants Already Sentenced or Awaiting Court Dates
One defendant from that October 2024 case, Ana Escalante, was sentenced in September to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon said in its FlashAlert statement. A separate scheme charged in November 2025 accused Alexandru Telescu and eleven others in a 26-count federal indictment involving the theft and use of EBT card information, with estimated losses totaling $700,000, per the Gorge News Center report. Telescu pleaded guilty to access-device fraud and aggravated identity theft on Sept. 29 and is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 28, 2027.
The losses pile up in part because benefit theft protections lag far behind those for ordinary credit and debit cards. The Congressional Research Service notes that certain consumer protections covering unauthorized credit- and debit-card transactions do not apply to EBT cards, and that under SNAP's permanent law, there is no federal funding to replace stolen benefits. That gap has left Oregon families exposed even as fraud investigations stretch across the state, with the Oregon Department of Human Services previously announcing it turned off and replaced 1,350 EBT cards from the Coos Bay and North Bend area that had been compromised by skimming.
