MONROE — A Monroe fraudster who Lynnwood Police detectives allege masterminded a complex gift card fraud scheme now is in court.
The 28-year-old woman’s scheme affected hundreds of victims by faking their digital gift card numbers to drain their account balances. Police think there are two or three additional possible suspects, too.
Police took the woman into custody Monday, Aug. 5 at her apartment near the hospital on 179th Avenue SE.
Inside her apartment, police found a credit card-making machine and tools to make fake checks, nearly one pound of fentanyl pills and powder, thousands of $100 bills, plus stolen firearms, a detective’s report said.
She bonded out of Snohomish County jail for $200,000.
The Tribune does not know whether she has been arraigned yet, and is choosing to not name her until arraignment.
The gift card scheme was complex and involved a handful of people, court documents show.
Simply put, they’d guess sequences of card numbers, hope the gift card accounts are valid and have money, and then go shopping.
Lynnwood Police asked reporters not to explain the scheme in detail to avoid copy-cats.
Further, the Monroe woman directly defrauded a Maryville woman. She racked up $7,000 in expenditures without the victim being aware of it because the fraudulent purchases were on a credit card number which pulled money from the victim’s health savings account (HSA). The fraud put the woman’s HSA account in the negative.
The women’s apparel retailer Victoria’s Secret and its Pink offshoot brand of stores were the fraudsters’ favored places to shop.
The stores at the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood were their go-to. Victoria’s Secret’s internal fraud department called on Lynnwood Police to investigate.
Store employees said the suspects would come multiple times a month to buy things. They’d use multiple gift card numbers loaded into their phone to make the purchases.
The card numbers are scanned off a barcode shown on a cell phone screen to make payment (similar to scanning the barcode on the Starbucks mobile-pay app, detectives wrote.)
The scheme started last fall. They tried more than 750 gift card numbers to make more than 185 purchases at Victoria’s Secret stores across the Puget Sound area.
Co-conspirators also utilized the fraudulent gift cards to launder them into new gift cards. They’d sell these fresh cards for cash.
Police say if you have any gift card to use it sooner versus later. “It leaves less time for the cards to be compromised,” Lynnwood Police spokeswoman Maren McKay said.
The detective wrote that Victoria’s Secret lost more than $60,000 because of the scheme.
Victoria’s Secret would reimburse the actual cardholder if they complained of fraud.
In March, Victoria’s Secret’s internal fraud department called Lynnwood Police because it’s local to the Alderwood Mall.
A multi-month investigation worked jointly by police and county prosecutors led to the Monroe woman’s arrest last Monday morning.
“Rest assured, this case is a priority for my office,” Snohomish County Prosecutor Jason Cummings said by email. “We appreciate the partnership with the Lynnwood Police Department and all law enforcement as we look to shut down operations like the one involved in this case.”
Police booked her on charges of 10 felonies, including two charges of possession of a stolen firearm, four charges of unlawful possession of a firearm and possession of instruments for financial fraud.
Court records show her past crimes included being caught with personal banking information that she said she’d obtained through the dark web. That arrest was in 2017. She pleaded guilty and she was put under drug alternative sentencing because she had a chemical dependency.
In 2018, she stole a rental car and led police on a chase through south Everett, went 90 miles an hour on the Boeing Freeway, and reached 100 miles an hour on Interstate 5 before coming back into Everett and crashing the rental car near Broadway and 33rd, court documents say. She was convicted of a DUI for being on drugs while driving and convicted of possession of a stolen vehicle. She pleaded guilty and she was put under drug alternative sentencing for that, too, because she had a chemical dependency.
Other crimes she was convicted of in the 2010s include vehicle prowling and identity theft for using a stolen credit card taken out of a victim’s car.
