A New York woman was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for her role in a scheme that defrauded customers of a Florence, Kentucky bank out of over one million dollars.
U.S. District Court Judge David L. Bunning sentenced 38-year-old Lisa Reid for one count of bank fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Reid was ordered to pay $1,071,871.33 in restitution. She will be on five years supervised release after the completion of her prison sentence.
Reid, who lived in New York, executed the scheme by working closely with codefendant Mahogani Graves who was employed as a customer service representative at Citibank.
According to court documents, for approximately a three-month period in 2006 Graves, 25, of Cleveland, Ohio stole credit card account numbers from customers and provided those numbers to Reid.
Reid admitted that she used the stolen credit card numbers to purchase merchandise at high end retail stores. Under Reid’s direction, Graves also changed the home addresses of bank customers to addresses in New York so that Reid could easily retrieve the merchandise.
Another co-defendant, Sophia Grant, helped collect the merchandise from the New York locations. In November of 2006, Graves traveled to New York and met with Reid who gave her some of the merchandise.
Court documents state that in March of 2007, authorities arrested Reid and Grant while they were trying to retrieve merchandise from the New York addresses.
Grant, 37, of New York, was sentenced to 21 months in March and ordered to pay $700,000 in restitution for her role in the conspiracy. Graves was sentenced to 25 months in prison in March as well and ordered to pay $845,601 in restitution.
All of the Citibank credit card holders affected by the scheme have had their credit restored.
Kerry B. Harvey, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Gerald O’Farrell, United States Postal Inspection Service jointly made the announcement today.
The investigation was conducted by the United States Postal Service. The United States was represented in the case by Assistant United States Attorney Laura Voorhees.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Kentucky