Authorities have arrested a Sandy Springs couple, including a 31-year-old former Taco Mac employee, in connection with the theft of possibly hundreds of credit card numbers.
Aja Annunziata faces 29 charges of financial identity fraud. She was arrested in December and released from Fulton County Jail on Feb. 7.
Her husband, Kareem Anthony Annunziata, was arrested on Feb. 14. He faces a charge of financial identity fraud and possession of tools for the commission of a crime. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had been released from jail as of Tuesday.
According to Sandy Springs police, managers at the Taco Mac restaurant at 5600 Roswell Road suspected Aja Annunziata of stealing credit card numbers while working there as a server. In December, her managers observed her remove a portable credit card “skimmer” – a device that stores a customer’s card information – from her apron pocket while working in the restaurant.
Police said Annunziata’s managers found the skimmer in her coat pocket later that evening and notified authorities. She was not charged at the time, pending an investigation.
A search warrant was later issued for the skimmer taken from Taco Mac. Information retrieved from the device indicated 29 credit card numbers and information had been illegally obtained while the device was in Annunziata's possession, police said.
She was arrested Dec. 21 at her home in the 700 block of Summer Drive in Sandy Springs.
Detectives executed another search warrant at her home Feb. 14, when they recovered three commercial credit card reading and writing devices along with dozens of prepaid gift cards containing information allegedly gleaned from customers. Authorities then arrested Kareem Anthony Annunziata.
Sandy Springs police spokesman Capt. Steve Rose said the agency expects the investigation to produce many more charges.
“We have had cases similar to this in the past but not involving so much at one time,” Rose said in an e-mail. “The small skimmer that (Aja Annunziata) originally used, holds 850 credit card numbers.”
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