Redondo Beach Arco Gas Station

An organized-crime ring that police
believe is Russian or Armenian targeted a high-volume Redondo Beach
Arco gas station, assigned a low-level soldier to infiltrate it and
waited eight months while he worked himself into a position where
he could implant a tiny, high-tech skimmer to steal
customers' credit-card information. Armed with a fresh batch
of personal-information numbers, the gang began draining thousands
of Southern California bank accounts soon after Erick,
the model employee who was by then entrusted with opening the station
every day at 5 a.m., vanished in late April along with 1,500 packs
of cigarettes, $1,000, a laptop, his employee application form -
and the two digital video recorders used for surveillance. The skimmer
scam left a string of more than 1,000 victims, stretching from Santa
Barbara to Newport Beach.