A federal grand jury in Alexandria has indicted two high-ranking members of a purse-snatching and counterfeiting ring that authorities said has been operating in the capital region for nearly five years, documents said.
Arrest warrants were issued last week for 39-year-old Robert Lee Felton Jr., of Fort Washington. He was charged with 13 counts of conspiracy, identity theft and counterfeit security. Antoine Dutch, 25, of Washington, D.C., was charged with five counts.
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The scam began in 2005, police said. The first step in the conspiracy usually involved the theft of purses or wallets from unsuspecting people, documents said.
Felton usually stole the purses from women while they bought gas from gas stations, court documents said. Sometimes Felton would hang around automobile dealerships and snatch unattended purses from female employees in the sales department.
Felton then created counterfeit payroll checks on the accounts of legitimate businesses like Inova Health System or Giant of Maryland, document said.
He then used men and women who resembled the pictures on the stolen driver’s licenses to cash the counterfeit checks, documents said.
Felton allegedly drove Dutch and the other conspirators to stores in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia to cash the checks.
Alexandria police got a key break in the case two years ago when detectives recovered one of the checks and tested it for fingerprints, court documents said. The prints matched those of one of the conspirators, 23-year-old Rosa E. Duenas, of Mount Rainer, police said. Duenas was one of the women who cashed the checks and split the money with Felton, documents said.
Investigators kept surveillance on Duenas and connected her to more of the counterfeit checks. When police in Hyattsville pulled Duenas over for a traffic stop and asked for her driver’s license, she handed over an identification card that belonged to one of the women who had had their purses stolen.
Duenas was convicted of bank fraud and aggravated identity theft and sentenced to more than two years in prison in January, according to court documents. She was ordered to pay back $30,000 in restitution.
