May 2, 2007

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  NEWS: Felony Lane Defendants Sentenced

  Along with the Secret Service and several Broward County police departments, U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta announced last week that U.S. District Court Judge Federico Moreno had sentenced six members of the notorious identity theft crime ring "Felony Lane." Thanks to the "Operation Felony Lane" sting, the group - including suspected ringleader Shameca Walters – were systematically taken down, thanks to the cooperation of state and federal forces. The investigation was targeted at cutting down large scale identity theft rings operating in the tri-county area, with Walter's gang being most prominent among those aimed for. The defendants were charged in multi-million dollar bank fraud and identity theft schemes, and sentenced to respective prison terms.
  
  Walters, for her part, received a nine year sentence. As leader of the band, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and identity theft. Walters also got slammed with five years of supervised release to follow her prison stay, and was ordered to pay $962,000 in restitution to her victims and their credit card companies. Cohorts Theresa Howard Mason, Jerri Marini, Anita Proby, Edith Baker, and Diana Leathers were also sentenced to a variety of combinations of prison time, house arrest, and/or probation, as well as over a million dollars in accumulated restitution. Three Felony Lane co-defendants have pleaded guilty and are still awaiting their own days in court.
  
  Felony Lane, so dubbed because of how the fraud was being carried out, engaged in ID theft and fraud in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties. The defendants routinely stole purses and wallets from locked cars in the parking lots of gyms and day care facilities (and ghoulishly enough, cemeteries), knowing that people were likely to leave these things in their cars at such places. They then used the filched personal information of hundreds of victims to perpetrate bank fraud, credit card fraud, and other crimes.
  
  
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