The Great EBT Heist: Romanian Man Turns Social Welfare into a Personal ATM 🎩💸

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Imagine a guy so bored with honest work that he figures, “Why not steal nearly half a million dollars from people who are just trying to buy groceries?” Meet Marius Marian, a 39-year-old Romanian who apparently woke up one day and decided “Let’s run a high-stakes game using the U.S. government’s own benefits system.” Because obviously, who needs honesty when you’ve got a skimming device and a penchant for financial chaos? 😏

According to the Northern District of California’s U.S. Attorney’s Office (who, by the way, seem to have a surprisingly entertaining sense of justice), Marian swiped a whopping $507,916 in Electronic Benefits Transfer funds. That’s roughly enough to buy a used Cadillac, or a lifetime supply of ramen noodles for 25 families-because apparently, Marian isn’t too concerned about the little things like “people’s livelihoods.”

He also managed to add a little flair to his criminal resume by illegally reentering our fair country after being previously deported, and lying about his past like a pro. He thought the U.S. was a little too suspicious, so he made false statements on his asylum application (because who doesn’t love a bit of falsehood with their deportation stories?). Must be a real thrill to pretend you’re a refugee when you’re really just a guy with a bank fraud conviction. 🤷‍♂️

How did Marian pull off this artful dodging? Well, he used skimmer devices on ATMs and point-of-sale machines-a true magician stealing your money without you noticing. Once he had the card info, he encoded it onto counterfeit cards and… voilà! Withdrawals in Northern California that probably made the local bank tellers wonder if they’d accidentally turned into Snapchat filters.

“As a result of his scheme, Marian withdrew $507,916 in cash and had plans to grab a lot more-$611,845 to be exact. His cunning involved sophisticated methods but left at least 25 victims scrambling to replace what Marian helped himself to. The man’s a bona fide social security ninja.”

And just when you thought he was done being an impressive fraudster, he also admitted to lying about being a refugee. Specifically, on April 27, 2023, he didn’t mention that he’d been deported before and that he had a previous conviction for bank fraud in 2019. Because, apparently, honesty is overrated if you’re trying to avoid jail, right?

Marian’s criminal empire is quite expansive: 30 years for bank fraud, 10 for illegal re-entry, and 20 for asylum fraud-because inconsistency knows no bounds when it comes to his sentencing options.

So now Marian, the man who made stealing from the poor look like an Olympic sport, is due in court on October 20th. Let’s hope the judge has a good sense of humor-or at least a sense of justice, something Marian probably isn’t well-acquainted with, after all.

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2025-08-06 15:04