BOISE – Charmaine Danelle Montgomery, 23, of Fort Worth, Texas, was sentenced today in United States District Court to 30 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release for perpetrating a credit card fraud scheme that targeted local retailers in June 2015, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced. Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill also ordered Montgomery to pay $15,904.08 in restitution. Montgomery pleaded guilty on December 1, 2015.
According to the plea agreement, Montgomery admitted to traveling to the District of Idaho, along with her co-defendant, Brooke Darby, for the purpose of making fraudulent purchases of gift cards and merchandise from retail stores, using stolen credit card numbers encoded onto stock gift cards. Mongtomery admitted to obtaining the stock debit cards encoded with unauthorized credit card numbers, and making purchases at retail stores on June 23 and June 24, 2015. In all, Montgomery admitted that she and Darby purchased approximately $13,095.90 in gift cards and merchandise with the fraudulently encoded gift cards. Upon their arrest, Darby and Montgomery were found in possession of approximately 250 gift cards encoded with unauthorized credit card numbers.
Co-defendant Darby also pleaded guilty and was sentenced on January 25, 2016, to 28 months in prison and three years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay restitution.
The case was investigated by the United States Secret Service and the Boise Police Department.