A man who pleaded no contest to using fraudulent Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to withdraw nearly $116,000 in state public assistance benefits from bank ATMs in Lancaster, Studio City and West Hollywood was sentenced Tuesday to two years behind bars and two years on supervised release, including at least six months in a residential drug treatment program.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig E. Veals also ordered Ioannis Alecsopoulos, now 28, to pay $111,780 in restitution to the county Department of Public Social Services.
Authorities recovered more than $4,000 following Alecsopoulos’ Feb. 1 arrest, Deputy District Attorney Jessica Palasik noted in her sentencing memorandum, which asked the judge to impose a five-year term.
Investigators conducting an Electronic Benefit Transfer anti-skimming operation at a bank in Lancaster watched Alecsopoulos conducting automated teller machine transactions for “an unusual length of time,” the prosecutor wrote.
He fled on foot after investigators tried to detain him, but was nabbed about two blocks away, Palasik wrote, with investigators subsequently locating $4,080, eight skimming devices, about 94 access cards re-encoded with EBT account data and a false identification.
Authorities subsequently determined that he had attempted to fraudulently withdraw $225,260 in public assistance benefits over a four-month period using 244 access cards re-encoded with the victims’ EBT account numbers and personal identifying numbers, and that he had succeeded in using 120 of the cards to withdraw a total of $115,860 in public assistance funds, according to the sentencing memorandum.
Alecsopoulos pleaded no contest Oct. 6 to 42 felony counts of grand theft and 10 felony counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information, along with a misdemeanor count of resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.
He has remained behind bars since his arrest.