Tempe, AZ – 9 October 2018 – A 34-year-old Tempe man was sentenced Wednesday to 4.5 years in prison for a credit-card fraud scheme targeting more than 150 account holders who were ill or had recently died, authorities said.
Jason Siebert-Thomas was accused of using victims’ personal information to obtain duplicate credit cards and make more than $300,000 in fraudulent purchases, the Tempe Police Department said after his arrest in 2017.
Thomas told investigators that he fraudulently used the credit cards of deceased individuals, which affected multiple victims in Tempe, Glendale and Paradise Valley.
An investigation was launched when American Express alerted the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators to suspicious activity, and a bulletin was issued to fraud investigators, including Tempe police.
In 2016, authorities learned that Siebert-Thomas was adding his name to deceased individuals’ credit-card accounts and changing their addresses to his own residence, the Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday in announcing the sentence.
Police tracked Siebert-Thomas’ phone number and discovered he used his phone to order multiple duplicate cards of other account holders.
Siebert-Thomas initially was arrested in January 2017, but was released while his charges were pending, officials said.
Siebert-Thomas pleaded guilty to fraudulent schemes and artifices, aggravated taking the identity of another person or entity and taking the identity of another person or entity.
Besides the prison term, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gerlach sentenced Siebert-Thomas to three years of supervised probation upon his release, the Attorney General’s Office said.
Source: KGUN9
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