Stan Harris, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, and Allen Bryant, Resident Agent in Charge of the United States Secret Service, announced that Jermaine McClure of Jackson, Mississippi, entered a guilty plea to Aggravated Identity Theft. Sentencing is scheduled for October 1. McClure faces a mandatory sentence of two years in federal prison, and a fine of up to $250,000. McClure must also pay full restitution to all victims.
McClure was arrested by the Clinton, Mississippi Police Department in September, 2008, for failure to appear on unrelated traffic violations. He was found at the time to be in possession of various forms of identification belonging to others as well as counterfeit checks. Rebecca Pittman, an investigator with the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department working with the Metro Jackson Identity Theft Task Force, linked McClure to an identity theft ring led by Milton B. Johnson, also of Jackson. The Johnson ring is one of the largest identity theft rings identified as operating in Central Mississippi. Johnson was sentenced in June to over nine years in federal prison after pleading guilty to a multiple-count federal indictment charging him with Identity Theft and related fraud charges.
McClure admitted possessing and using a state identification card issued to another person to cash counterfeit checks at Trustmark Bank branches in Vicksburg and Jackson and to make large purchases at area businesses.
This case was the result of a joint investigation involving the U. S. Attorney’s Office, the United States Secret Service, the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department, and other law enforcement agencies participating in the Metro Jackson Identity Theft Task Force. Additional investigative assistance was provided by Trustmark National Bank and Home Depot.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Mississippi