Raleigh– The United States Attorney’s Office announced that today in federal court, Chief United States District Judge James C. Dever, III, sentenced MAMADOU JALLOW, 32, of Raleigh, to serve 60 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, on charges of Aggravated Identity Theft and Conspiracy to Commit Access Device Fraud. The court also revoked JALLOW’s prior term of supervised release and sentenced him to an additional 24 months in prison to run consecutive. The total amount of prison time imposed on the charges and revocation of supervised release amounted to 84 months.
The indictment charged that JALLOW and others engaged in a scheme to acquire, among other things, large quantities of cigarettes in North Carolina and elsewhere using counterfeit gift cards. The gift cards utilized by JALLOW and others in the scheme were counterfeit because the data encoded in the magnetic strip of the cards had been altered to contain credit and debit card numbers that were not encoded upon them at the time they were manufactured. Conspirators acquired stolen credit and debit card data from sources on the internet. JALLOW and others received the stolen credit and debit card data in the form of internet email accounts to which they had access. Conspirators used the stolen credit and debit card data to fraudulently re-encode cards for later use to purchase cigarettes and other items.
The indictment further charged that after acquiring several counterfeit cards, JALLOW, and other conspirators used the cards, and caused the cards to be used, to purchase numerous cartons of cigarettes. The conspirators would generally travel from one store to another in a vehicle during a single trip to acquire a large volume of cigarettes. After acquiring the cigarettes, conspirators would transport them to other states to be resold at a profit.
The scheme was brought to an end in July and August of 2014 when JALLOW was caught attempting to make a purchase using the counterfeit cards. At the time the defendant committed the scheme, he was already serving a term of federal supervised release for a prior conviction for access device fraud in South Carolina.
Investigation of the case was conducted by the United States Secret Service. Assistant United States Attorney William M. Gilmore represented the United States.