Prosecutors have charged 10 people with conspiring to steal the identities of some 85 victims and use the information to rob banks of at least $400,000.
Nineteen or more of the victims lived in the Washington area, according to court documents filed in Alexandria’s federal court last week.
Charged were Leonardo Darnell Zanders, Clyde Austin Gray Jr., Lennier McLeod, Wenona Latrice White, Sydney Anthony Charles, Shonya Michelle Young, Darryl Earl Price, Sylvester Vaughn, George Lee Reid and Claire Barker.
The scheme affected people across 17 states, authorities alleged, and involved dozens of phony bank transactions that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Authorities allege the conspiracy started as early as 2007, when the members of the identity-theft ring pickpocketed personal identification cards, credit cards, bank records and personal checks. They then used the stolen information to impersonate the victims at banks in the Washington area and elsewhere, court papers state.
Many of the identity-theft victims reported having their pockets picked or their mail intercepted, U.S. Postal Inspector William J. Aiello said in a sworn statement. The conspirators would show up in banks across the country and, using phony identification, write checks under one victim’s name and deposit them into phony accounts opened under other victims’ names. They would then withdraw the money in a separate transactions.
The “split-deposits” were worth anywhere from $26 to $6,000 at a time, although Reid admitted he had obtained as much as $50,000 in a single day, Aiello’s affidavit states.
Authorities allege that some of the defendants conducted multiple transactions in a day and even returned to the same bank branches. For instance, on March 6, 2008, Vaughn conducted the “split-deposit transactions” at three SunTrust Banks in D.C. On May 6, Price did the same type of transactions at two of the same banks, court papers state.
The scheme began unraveling in September 2007 after accused ringleader Zanders tried to send three packages containing stolen checks and identification of 19 Virginia and D.C. residents from a FedEx store in Illinois. Authorities raided Zanders’ home and found photocopied identification and cash cards for some 36 people in 10 states.
Zanders is currently being held in Detroit.
