Accused killer driver Luskin a Kingston fraudster

The man accused of plowing a car into a minivan at 200 kilometres per hour in Toronto, killing three people, dodged jail time two years ago in Kingston when he was convicted of rigging a Scotiabank ATM with devices that steal personal data and PIN numbers from customers. The scam, known as skimming, allows fraudsters to reproduce phoney bank cards and drain the accounts of victims. Roman Luskin was just 18 when he was arrested in Kingston in 2006 (full stories after the jump). He ended up getting six months of house arrest.

Luskin pleaded guilty to five charges: possessing card readers adapted to illegally skim banking information from debit cards; possession of stolen debit card data; mischief through interference with bank customers' use of their debit cards; and attempting to defraud Scotiabank customers of money. Luskin had pleaded not guilty to 12 charges at the start but changed his mind after his lawyer looked at surveillance video showing him and an accomplice rigging equipment at the bank. The prosecution dropped seven charges. Here's the full story from the Whig of August 17, 2007:

A 32-year-old nylon worker who alerted Kingston Police to an ATM card scam last summer, testified that he became suspicious after noticing that a customer who'd slipped in front of him, leaving him with no option but the centre bay, wasn't using the machine he'd claimed.
Kevin A. Thompson was testifying at the trial of Roman Luskin, 19, a Russian immigrant from the Toronto area who has now been convicted on five criminal charges, including two counts of possessing card readers adapted to illegally skim banking information from debit cards; possession of stolen debit card data; mischief through interference with bank customers' lawful use of their debit cards; and attempting to defraud Scotiabank customers of money.
Luskin began his trial in Kingston's Ontario Court of Justice this week facing 12 charges, including an additional four counts of fraud and three counts of theft arising out of the scam. He initially pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Police had determined that electronic information skimmed from the ATMs of two Kingston ScotiaBank branches between July 6 and July 11, 2006, was used to steal $5,550 from the accounts of four customers.
Luskin and his previously-convicted partner Sergiy Bagarov were arrested on July 7, however, and were in custody when the illegal transactions were made.
Assistant Crown attorney Kristen Mohr withdrew the theft and fraud charges against Luskin during the second day of his trial. By then, Luskin's lawyer, Aaron Spektor, had privately viewed videotapes he said he wasn't aware of when the trial began which captured his client and Bagarov with the skimmers. The two lawyers began talking about a possible guilty plea. After Mohr reduced the number of charges, Luskin pleaded guilty to the remaining five.
He'll be sentenced Oct. 3 by Justice Paul Megginson, who has ordered an assessment of Luskin's Toronto area residence for electronic surveillance monitoring. Spektor plans to ask for a six-month conditional sentence order that would place his client on four months of house arrest and two months with an 8 p.m. curfew, followed by a year of probation.
Luskin and Bagarov were arrested in a parking lot just north of the Scotiabank branch at 863 Princess St., minutes after Thompson reported the crime. Police also recovered a second card reader from the ground near the front wheel of a car registered to Bagarov, a power cable inside the car that fit the reader, a map of Kingston and some double-sided tape. It was also later discovered that ATMs at the 168 Wellington St. Scotiabank had been skimmed by the pair the previous day.
Thompson testified that he was out running miscellaneous errands with his wife and young son that Friday morning when, around 10 a.m., he pulled in near the entrance to Scotiabank's three ATM machines.
He told the judge he immediately noticed a man, who appeared to be in his early 20s, talking on a cellphone. It was warm enough that day, Thompson explained, that he regretted wearing a T-shirt, yet the stranger was sporting a white "Miami Vice-type" jacket and wrap-around sunglasses.
As he headed toward the ATMs, he said the man in the white jacket moved as well, reaching the door ahead of him and entering first, but holding the door for him. Thompson said there was already one customer inside, a bearded man in a ball cap, using the machine on the left and the man in the white jacket moved to the ATM bay on the far right, effectivelyleaving him the middle bay.
As he prepared to make his transaction, however, Thompson said "I saw he still had his cell phone in his hand." He told the judge he'd seen some reports about ATM scamming and was concerned the man might be trying to capture his PIN number with a camera phone. He said he threw the man an annoyed look, which caused him to step closer to his own machine, but he realized the stranger was still making no attempt to use the machine.
Without conceding that his client and the suspicious man at the ATM next to Thompson that day were the same person, Spektor suggested to the witness that he couldn't be sure the keyboard of the ATM on the right wasn't being used since he couldn't see past the barrier. But Thompson told him he used those ATMs regularly and "the one on the right is for the hearing impaired. It's so loud a deaf dog outside could probably hear it."
Thompson said he began scrutinizing the ATM in front of him and noticed that the debit card slot was askew. Further investigation led him to discover a device with an LED light taped under the machine. He testified that he thought of just walking out, then "it struck me, it's kind of like a land mine." Thompson said he then reached in and pulled the device out from under the ATM, shoved it under his shirt to call 911 and walked across the street to a pay phone at Regent and Princess Streets.
He recalled that the man in the white jacket and shades appeared to be watching him from inside the ATM area after he left. He told Megginson that the man then came out and stood across the street by one of the flower planters, staring across at him and still talking on his cellphone. Thompson said with every move the man made he "was relaying what I was seeing to the 911 operator" just in case he had to say "he's coming over here, you might want to get someone here now."

Luskin was eventually handed a six-month conditional sentence to serve in the community and was put on probation for one year.

Here's the Whig story from July 11, 2006 about Luskin's arrest:

Kingston Police hope the arrest of two Toronto-area men, who were caught with a debit card skimmer and a pinhole camera, will remind people to be more vigilant against identity theft when using automated teller machines.
"If it looks out of sorts, don't use it," Det. Sgt. Bob Ritchie said yesterday.
Alerted by a sharp-eyed citizen, who spotted the card skimmer after realizing something wasn't quite right about the ATM it was affixed to, police quickly caught the suspects around 1 p.m. Saturday.
The man removed the device, which looks like a cover plate for a card reader, and called police from a pay phone across from the Scotiabank at 863 Princess St.
When police arrived, the man pointed out two men who had been hanging out in the foyer. One of them was arrested by uniformed officers at the scene while the other one fled.
An off-duty police officer, who heard about the incident on his police radio and was in the area running errands, was able, despite the fact he was wearing sandals, to tackle and arrest the other man.
A card skimmer and pinhole camera were found under the car where police initially confronted the men.
Roman Luskin, 18, and Sergiy Bagarov, 43, have been charged with possession of credit card data and mischief in relation to data. Luskin also faces a charge of escaping lawful custody.
Ritchie said the card skimmer and pinhole camera, installed to capture people's personal identification numbers, were in place between 11:15 a.m. and 1 p.m.
"At this point in time, we don't actually know if there has been any theft of funds," he said.
Using two-sided tape, the fraudsters stuck what appeared to be a card reader on one of the bank's ATMs. Electronic gear was jammed into its back to enable the recording of people's debit card data.
The pinhole camera then kept track of people's personal identification numbers as they entered them into the machine.
If the scam had been successful, Ritchie said the data would have been downloaded onto a computer then uploaded onto blank copycat debit cards, which would have been used to withdraw money from the accounts.
Ritchie said he doesn't know how many other people were involved in the scam and suspects there are others, but he said he has no evidence yet that it is related to organized crime.
"There may be other suspects since they were both on cellphones for most of the duration of the time they were there," he said.
Video footage taken by the bank's security camera also show the men leading people to a specific machine.
Although it might have been hard to figure out the machine had been tampered with, Ritchie said bank machine users can take steps to protect themselves.
It's a good idea to cover one's fingers to protect access codes from what Ritchie describes as "shoulder surfers." These are people who might stand behind or beside a person in order to glimpse their security code.
Ritchie recommends caution if there are people hanging around the bank machine for a long time or if there's a sign on one or more of the machines directing ATM clients to a specific machine.
The fake faceplate seized by police on Saturday is a good imitation, Ritchie said, but he pointed out it might still stand out if compared to the faceplates on the other ATMs in the bank.
"If there are two ATMs together, look at the other one [to see] if it's not identical to the other ATM," he said.
ATM users should also become suspicious if someone offers to help them with their transaction when their card gets stuck in the machine. Mostly likely the card is being skimmed.
Card skimmers can sometimes be identified because they protrude farther from the face of the bank machine than the regular card slot does.
Ritchie suggests that anyone who used the ATM at the Scotiabank at 863 Princess St., on Saturday between 11:15 a.m. and 1 p.m. should call their bank to ensure their identity hasn't been stolen or their accounts emptied.

According to the Toronto Sun, Luskin faced charges earlier this year that were eventually dropped:

By Brett Clarkson
Toronto Sun, October 20, 2009

A convicted fraudster facing charges in a deadly Finch Ave. W. crash appeared in court three times yesterday -- with dried bloody cuts on his head, blood encrusted on his fingernails, and a bandage on his left hand.

But Roman Luskin, 21, was kept in jail overnight because his lawyer, Michael Simrod, was busy with another court matter and couldn't get to the Old City Hall bail court.

Luskin is no stranger to the courts. In August 2007, he was convicted in a Kingston courtroom of five fraud-related charges stemming from an ATM scam perpetrated in a Kingston Scotiabank a year earlier.

Two years later, Luskin also faced six charges -- one of which was a refusal to do a breathalyser test -- that were either stayed or withdrawn in May 2009 in York Region.

The stayed charges included two failure to comply counts and the refusal to provide a breath sample.

The withdrawn charges were one count of fraud, one count of possessing instruments of forgery, and a failure to comply.

Yesterday, Luskin stood for a few minutes in the prisoner's box in an Old City Hall courtroom on three different occasions -- just after 10 a.m., at 12:30 p.m., and 2:15 p.m.

He appeared to be limping as police led him back into the holding cells and quietly identified himself as Roman when a duty counsel lawyer asked him his name.

He showed little to no emotion, but seemed to frown intensely after looking down at a court artist's drawing -- no doubt realizing the throng of media in small courtroom were gathered there to report on him.

It was clear Luskin had been injured in the hours before his court appearance. Dried blood from a series of cuts caked his light-brown, buzzed hair. There was also dried blood on his fingernails and his left hand was in a bandage.

Police said that a BMW estimated to be going about 200 km/h slammed into a van with five people inside it on Saturday night at Finch and Tobermory Dr. Three were killed, two survived with critical injuries.

Luskin, a Russian immigrant, faces a total of 16 charges in connection with the crash.

Among the charges Luskin faces are three counts of criminal negligence causing death, three counts of impaired driving causing death, three counts of refusing to supply a breath sample causing death, and failure to comply with a court order.

Luskin is set to appear in court again today for a bail hearing at 1000 Finch Ave. W.

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