Broome Gas Pump Skimming Scheme Admitted

A Florida man will be sentenced in March after admitting to a scheme with far-reaching impact, including in the Southern Tier.

Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of New York say 34-year-old Hugo Hernandez of Miami Lakes has pleaded guilty to being part of an access device fraud and money laundering operation.

Hernandez admitted between December 2015 and July 2019 he and others built so-called skimming devices they inserted in gas pumps to steal customer information in Broome, Albany and Montgomery Counties as well as other locations around the country.

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The devices harvested personal data from people gassing up with the “pay-at-the-pump” option.

Hernandez and the other crooks used the stolen information to create fake credit and debit cards that, in turn, were used to obtain money orders, gift cards, cash and other things of value.

Hernandez faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $500,000, or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is greater and up to three years on probation.

Hernandez also agreed to forfeit $173,257 he got through creating at least 162 money orders that he deposited in a bank account he set up.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.