July 31, 2017
The owner of a former Fairmount pub pleaded guilty Monday to 40 counts of wire fraud in a case of stolen credit card numbers stretching back several years, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced.
Brown Street Pub owner Michael Hoffner, Sr., 52, of Voorhees, New Jersey, admitted he used the stolen information on 40 occasions between September and December 2012, charging the credit and debit cards from his own business at 795 N. 24th Street.
Fraudulent transactions on cards issued by American Express, Navy Federal Credit Union, USAA, ACNB, and the State Employees Credit Union of Maryland totaled more than $87,000 and were funneled into an account controlled by Hoffner. The average transaction was more than $2,000.
The cardholders were neither aware of nor authorized any of the transactions from Brown Street Pub, investigators said.
Hoffner could face several years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000,000, prosecutors said.
New ownership at the location, now called Fairmount & Co., has been in place since 2014.
The case was investigated by the United States Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Division, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General.
