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May 2, 2007
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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