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View Winners → Los Angeles resident sentenced to 88 months imprisonment
Arcadia Weekly May 20, 2013
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Andrea Lorraine Avery, 46, of Los Angeles was sentenced to 88 months’ imprisonment, three years’ supervised release and ordered to pay $2,883,401.62 in restitution.
In May 2011, six defendants were charged by a federal grand jury in connection with the scheme. In addition to Andrea Avery, Kirkland Charles, William Earl Gordon, Annita Hawes, and James Arthur Booker have already been sentenced. The remaining defendant, Bill James Releford, is scheduled to be sentenced in June 2013.
According to the evidence presented at trial, Avery and her co-defendants operated a scheme to defraud financial institutions by using stolen identities of people with good credit scores to establish business lines of credit and then used the money for personal expenses. Avery and her associates carried out the fraud by obtaining stolen personal identifying information, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit profiles, and driver’s license numbers, to complete fraudulent applications for business lines of credit to various banks. Once the applications were approved by the banks, funds were deposited into corporate bank accounts that were linked to the credit lines, usually in the amount of $100,000 each. The defendants liquidated the credit lines by issuing checks payable to the defendants and their companies, often for their personal use.
Over the course of the scheme, Avery operated numerous shell companies, directly receiving 33 checks totaling approximately $225,000. As evidenced at trial, Avery also used others involved in the scheme to cash checks for her and provided her with the profits. The evidence also demonstrated that she demanded that she receive approximately 15 to 20 percent from each fraudulent credit line.
At trial, Avery was found to be the mastermind who directed and controlled the entire fraud scheme that netted her and her co-schemers millions of dollars. Between 1998 and 2005, Avery directed others in the opening and draining of dozens of different credit lines. Based upon the 76 lines of credit presented at trial, the fraud resulted in a total actual loss of approximately $2,883,401.62.
