A Bostonian was handed a 54 months sentence in a federal prison for her connection to a scheme involving fraudulent credit cards. Lois Patricia Patton participated in the illegal scheme, which spread over three states – Georgia, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Patton, who has a number of aliases, and was also known as Lois Patton-Haynes and Trida, was sentenced to 54 months of prison time in the United States District Court located in District of New Hampshire. The 45-year old was incarcerated on charges of conspiring to commit wire fraud. The other charge on her, was aggravated identity theft.
First trace
Local police first got a whiff of her criminal activities when a couple tried to purchase a $1,000 gifts card at the Target (NYSE: TGT) store in the city of Concord, New Hampshire. They used two false credit cards with the embossed numbers of genuine credit cards used by others. One of the victims was 72-year old Ronald Stonis.
Stonis was stunned to find that a number of purchases were done through his credit card, which were not done by him at all. He said that he was all the more surprised as he did not lose his credit card. He was assured that he will not be charged for purchases done. In both the attempts, transactions got declined and the gift cards could not be purchased by the suspects. The police are of the opinion that the incident could be connected to the bigger Target breach, which happened some time back.
Prosecution
According to John P. Kacavas, a US Attorney, Patton conspired with a few others in April 2014 to buy expensive merchandise and gift cards at multiple retail box stores spread over three states. They planned to use illegal credit card accounts, which had been obtained by fraudulent means.
Patton and her co-conspirators were able to get the cards by utilizing misappropriated others’ personal identifying information and through the usage of false identification cards. In a few occasions, they wore disguises to carry out an illegal transaction. The tenure of her sentence includes total restitution amounting of $15,604 to Target Financial Retail Services and also to Citibank N.A and Synchrony Bank. Patton’s offenses were investigated by a number of government agencies: Cambridge police department of Massachusetts, Medway police of Massachusetts, and the Boston branch of US Secret Service. Bill Morse, an Assistant US Attorney, was the the head of prosecution.