Richmond Women Arrested for ATM Fraud Scheme
05/20/2015
Richmond Women Arrested for ATM Fraud Scheme
On November 06, 2014, Deveon Brown and Tessa Carter were arrested by NC3TF Detectives at their home in Richmond on multiple counts of Identity Theft. The NC3TF had been contacted in September, 2014 by an Investigator from Citibank regarding the above 2 suspects who were responsible for cashing checks on closed Citibank accounts throughout Contra Costa County over the previous 3 months for a loss of over $24,000.00.
The suspects MO was to contact Citibank customers near a Citibank branch and convince the Citibank customer to deposit a check, made out to the suspects, into the Citibank customers own Citibank account using the ATM. Brown and Carter would then have the Citibank customers not just deposit the check for them, but provide the suspects with their ATM cards and PIN numbers so Brown or Carter could deposit the checks and withdraw the funds.
The suspects would give the victims various stories as to why they needed to cash the check this way. The suspects would offer to pay the victims for helping. The victims would later find that the checks they deposited were written on closed accounts. The suspects were identified through ATM surveillance footage.
Deveon Brown was already on probation with a search clause for a previous fraud conviction out of Marin County. A search warrant was obtained for the suspect’s residence. Both suspects were at the residence at time the warrant was served. Additional evidence connecting the suspects to the crimes was located. A search warrant service at their residence in November identified another 70+ victims of identity theft, with a dollar loss of $70,000+.
The case was filed with the Contra Costa County D.A.’s Office.