An observant state trooper led to a discovery of credit card scanning devices.
The trooper noticed a car on Jan. 23 on Highway 9 with a Texas license plate that didn’t have its front plates, something that is required by Texas. The law enforcement officer stopped the car and began to question the driver of the northbound vehicle.
“(The driver) stated the car is a rental and that they were headed home to Florida from visiting a friend in Alabama,” an incident report from the trooper states. “However, (the driver) was unable to tell me the exact name of the town he was coming from.”
The trooper began to question the passenger who said they were coming from Georgia and headed to Florida.
“Due to their stories having discrepancies and the fact that they were traveling north instead of south, I had reasonable suspicion that they were possibly involved in criminal activity,” the trooper’s report said.
The trooper conducted a consensual search of the 2014 Nissan Altima and found several shipping receipts with different addresses in Georgia, prepaid debit cards, four phones and a package.
It was shipped overnight from Chicago to Montgomery. Yosniel Sotomayor, 39, of Miami admitted to the package being his and said it contained computer chips.
“I then asked (Sotomayor) to open the package and his demeanor completely changed,” the trooper said.
Sotomayor opened the package, handed it to the trooper and walked away. It contained four small black credit card scanning devices.
“Once (State Bureau of Investigation) arrived on the scene, I was informed the Secret Service has an ongoing investigation on Mr. Sotomayor for placing and retrieving scanning devices in the Montgomery area,” the trooper’s report states. “...SBI collected the evidence on the scene and gave it to the Secret Service to further their case.”
Sotomayor was charged with encoded data fraud and taken to the Elmore County Jail. He has a $15,000 cash bond available to him.
“If he makes it, we have a hold on him from another agency,” Elmore County sheriff Bill Franklin said.
