Women Head to Prison for Stealing and Using Patient Information to Create Fraudulent Bank Accounts

HOUSTON – With the sentencing of Leatrice Reynaud, 45, three Houston women have now been held accountable for their crimes of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and bank fraud, announced U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson. Reynaud previously pleaded guilty as did Houston cousins, Tonya Beverly, 39, and Demetria Jones, 41.

Today, U.S. District Judge Gray Miller ordered Reynaud to serve a sentence of 57 months in federal prison to be immediately followed by three years of supervised release. Beverly was sentenced last month to a term of 63 months in prison, while Jones, who was a minor participant, received 12 months and one day in custody. The three conspirators were further ordered to pay more than $100,000 in restitution to USAA Federal Savings Bank - the ultimate financial victim of the crime. As part of their plea agreements, the conspirators have agreed to forfeiture of $106,383.51 in unlawful proceeds to the United States.

Beverly, Reynaud and Jones admitted they conspired together to create and access false and fraudulent USAA Federal Savings Bank accounts using stolen personal identification information, including names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. Beverly admitted she stole the personal information from the patient files of health care providers with whom she had been employed.

In less than two years, the conspirators created 33 false and fraudulent USAA accounts and transferred approximately $205,719 into those accounts from the real bank accounts of at least 35 individuals. Several of the victims were elderly, including one who was born in 1922 and another who was born in 1929 as well as another victim who was caring for her terminally ill husband when the crime occurred.

Today, the prosecutor read a portion of a victim statement to the court that described the mental anguish and stress caused by the conspirators’ actions. The amount of loss for each victim varied - $23,800 was taken out of the account of the victim born in 1922, while $24,000 was taken from another victim.

At least 16 different banks were affected by the defendants’ actions. As part of the fraud scheme, the conspirators used homes that were listed for sale or vacant as the recipient addresses for debit cards mailed by USAA for the false and fraudulent accounts. Jones received one of the false and fraudulent debit cards at her home address. The USAA debit cards in the victims’ real names were used to withdraw cash from ATM machines, including machines located in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Texas and to make purchases, including plane tickets to Los Angeles, California, for the defendants and the children of one of the defendants. The conspirators also used phones registered in the name of another victim of identity theft to access the fraudulent USAA accounts and perform account functions.

The women were permitted to remain on bond and voluntarily surrender to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future.

The investigation leading in this case was conducted by the U.S. Secret Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Redlinger prosecuted the case.