New York Man Pleads Guilty to Credit Card Fraud, Exonerates Friend
By Mary K. Miraglia
HACKENSACK, N.J. (March 20, 2017) — A New York man pleaded guilty to possessing one stolen credit card Monday in Superior Court, and exonerated the friend who was with him when Fort Lee police arrested the pair.
Mario Paulino, 18 , of New York City, had been charged with eleven counts related to fraudulent credit cards, including a second degree charge of possessing 10 or more items of personal identification that belonged to five or more people.
He pleaded guilty to a third degree charge against 270 days in the Bergen County Jail,and the remaining second, third and fourth degree charges were all dismissed.
Defense attorney James Gizzi of Glen Rock said once Paulino is sentenced June 2, he anticipates that all charges against his client, Peter Duran Rodriguez, will be dropped.
Paulino told Judge Margaret M. Foti that Rodriguez was with him but didn’t know anything about the phony credit cards.
FEb 16 last year you were in Fort Lee — when giving police ID in your wallet there was a credit card that didn’t belong to you.
You knew it didn’t belong to you and it was a stolen credit card, yet
You have given Peter Rodriguez a list of places to go — there were other cards found in your pocket. He didn’t know about them, you were the only person who knew you had stolen credit cards.
Under questioning by his attorney, Ron Bar-Nadav of Hackensack, Paulino admitted that he was in Fort Lee Feb. 16, 2016 and “When giving police the ID in your wallet, there was a credit card there that didn’t belong to you.
“You knew it didn’t belong to you and was a stolen credit card?”
“Yes,” Paulino said.
“You had given Peter Rodriguez a list of places to go, there were other cards found in your pocket. He didn’t know about them. You were the only person who knew you had stolen credit cards, is that true?”
“Yes,” he responded.
Bar-Nadav said police discovered the cards when they pulled him over for a motor vehicle stop. When Paulino removed his driver’s license from his wallet, the officer noticed a credit card fall out. The investigating officer examined the card and found that it belonged to a man named Ramesh Shah, and not to Paulino.
When police searched the vehicle they found many more stolen credit cards as well as equipment for reading and producing credit cards.
Paulino said Rodriguez only had a “list of places to go,” and wasn’t involved with the credit card fraud.
