Alex Dontfred, 29, David Tilus, 27, Sherika Rowe, 20, Fritznel Etienne, 24, and Latonya Ware, 27, all of Lauderhill, were sentenced for their participation in a stolen identity tax refund scheme and an access device fraud scheme that resulted in the submission of over $137,000 in fraudulent tax refund claims and over $49,000 in unauthorized access device purchases.
According to court documents, Andrew Ware, David Tilus, Latonya Ware and Sherika Rowe obtained the personal identifying information (PII) of numerous identity theft victims, including their names, dates of birth, and social security numbers. Latonya Ware stole patients’ names and social security numbers from a medical office where she worked, and gave the PII to Tilus and her cousin, Andrew Ware. Rowe electronically filed fraudulent tax returns utilizing the victims’ names and social security numbers, and the fraudulent refunds from these returns were loaded onto prepaid debit cards that Tilus and Andrew Ware used to purchase gift cards and other merchandise from retail stores. Fraudulent refunds claimed by Andrew Ware, Tilus, Latonya Ware and Rowe from the stolen identities totaled approximately $137,132.
You can access the full press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida here.
And no, they don’t identify the medical practice whose patient data were stolen – and the court records I looked at don’t identify them, either, although they note that Latonya Ware manually copied patients’ names and Social Security numbers onto paper that she gave to David Tilus and Andrew Ware. In some cases, she texted the PII to Andrew Ware.
So… does anyone have access to an employment history database that can figure out where she was working between February 2012 and April 2013?