“Sophisticated Band of Thieves” Arrested In MARTA Transit Card Scheme

Broadcast version of this story.

MARTA police Chief Wanda Dunham says this is the first time the department has dealt with criminal activity involving breeze cards.

In fact, Chief Dunham refers to the eight arrested as a sophisticated band of thieves who were able to bypass the breeze card security feature, clone the card and add the value of a monthly card.

“They were actually making a hundred percent profit from the cards.”

A MARTA monthly breeze card is ninety-five dollars and can only be purchased at a MARTA ride store or through the breeze card vending machines at the rail stations.

It’s not clear how the suspects were able to clone the cards says Chief Dunham.

But when authorities made the arrests, over four hundred fake MARTA breeze cards were confiscated.

“We just know that these cards had no value. And once they did what they did, they were fully functional cards with the monthly fare.”

If not for a MARTA customer alerting authorities, Dunham says it the counterfeit ring could have made a lot of money.

MARTA officials admit the system was not setup to detect counterfeit cards.

But now say they are working with the breeze card vendor to make sure it won’t happen again.

Chief Dunham says it’s believed all the major suspects have been arrested and none are MARTA employees.

The suspects’ ages range from 22 to 45.

All have been charged with racketeering and five have an additional charge of financial transaction card fraud.