Some criminals reside a lifetime of crime — this one led a number of lives, 26 of them no less than, in line with federal prosecutors.
Jessica Bailey Sowell, 32, of Charlotte, was a part of an identification theft ring that used stolen bank cards and pretend driver’s licenses to wrack up almost a half-million {dollars} in debt, in line with Russ Ferguson, US Lawyer for the Western District of North Carolina.
Whereas executing a search warrant in a resort room the place Sowell was staying, federal brokers recovered a lavishly embellished weapon: “a Taurus G3 9mm handgun, bedazzled with sequins on the barrel,” prosecutors added.
Sowell ran up different individuals’s tabs shopping for something from on a regular basis objects at Goal and Walmart to high-end clothes and luxurious automobiles throughout a year-long crime spree throughout the south, in line with officers and stories.
“Sowell created fraudulent identification paperwork with the stolen private figuring out data, which she used at banks, resorts, and retail shops to acquire cash and merchandise, and to hire resort rooms and automobiles,” federal prosecutors stated.
“Over the course of the investigation, regulation enforcement discovered letters, financial institution playing cards, and checks in Sowell’s possession that belonged to no less than 26 victims of identification theft,” Ferguson stated in an announcement.
On Monday, she realized her destiny.
“Sowell was sentenced to 57 months in jail adopted by 5 years of supervised launch for financial institution fraud, aggravated identification theft, and illegal possession of a firearm,” in line with prosecutors.
She was additionally ordered to pay restitution within the quantity of $47,190.25.
Investigators seized a suitcase containing a whole lot of items of mail with numerous names and addresses, and a second suitcase was filled with store-tagged merchandise.
Authorities additionally discovered two handwritten journals with the names and credit score data of a number of victims; and 23 driver’s licenses from completely different states with Sowell’s {photograph}, in line with prosecutors.
Throughout a search of a rental car Sowell was utilizing, investigators discovered a bank card within the identify of an ID theft sufferer, receipts for merchandise bought with the sufferer’s bank card, an identification card printer and a number of clean identification playing cards in addition to holographic stickers, prosecutors stated.
At one level through the investigation, Sowell’s confederate made a daring escape, leaping from a second-story resort window as police had been closing in on him, in line with The Charlotte Observer.
Sowell’s crime spree began in October 2018, prosecutors stated, when she and her three accomplices used individuals’s mail and actual property listings to steal their identities.
“The defendants used the stolen identities of actual individuals… to create identification playing cards within the victims’ names, however with the defendants’ pictures,” the indictment states. “Prosecutors stated they opened bank cards at locations reminiscent of Lowe’s, Walmart, Belk, Kohl’s and Goal, and bought autos from a number of CarMax dealerships within the Carolinas, Tennessee and Georgia.”
