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3 arrested in counterfeit credit card shopping spree

Two New Yorkers - including a corrections officer - and a Holiday resident are accused of using fake credit cards.

By ROBIN STEIN
Published August 17, 2006

TARPON SPRINGS - What began as a fruitful day of shopping ended with 119 felony charges for a credit card counterfeiting trio that included a federal corrections officer, police said.

Sykeua L. Lee, 27, normally works at Metropolitan Corrections Facility in New York City, but police said she spent Monday on a shopping spree with fellow New Yorker Victor M. Washington and Holiday resident Jeanine S. Garran.

By day's end, the threesome had spent nearly $10,000 on 36 fake credit cards at Staples, Wal-Mart, KB Toys and two telephone stores at Westfield Countryside mall, said Tarpon Springs police Sgt. J. Allen MacKenzie.

Between each score, MacKenzie said, the group emptied the loot at Garran's Holiday home, where police recovered late Monday night a stash of cameras, laptop computers, electronic games, televisions and $1,600 in cash.

The counterfeit cards fueling the spree also proved to be the group's undoing.

"The printing quality was poor," MacKenzie said, "so if you looked at the backside of the credit cards, you noticed that they were not clean and crisp as a normal credit card should be."

Suspicion was first piqued when the group presented multiple cards to a clerk at a RadioShack in Pasco. The cards all had magnetic stripes that could not be swiped, MacKenzie said. The clerk called 911 and alerted other RadioShacks in the region.

The news reached the store in Tarpon Springs about 7:40 p.m., just as the three were leaving, MacKenzie said. About 3½ hours later, a Tarpon Springs Tactical Street Crimes Unit spotted the group pulling into a Chili's Grill & Bar on U.S. 19 near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where all three were taken into custody.

After the arrests, Tarpon Springs officers and Pasco County sheriff's deputies went to Garran's home. Besides the day's spoils, authorities found five children, ages 7 to 16. The children were placed in the care of a family friend.

In January, Garran, 36, turned herself in to the Florida Highway Patrol and admitted leaving the scene of a fatal crash in November, in which a 56-year-old Holiday man was killed crossing U.S. 19.

Police said they alerted the Bureau of Prisons about Lee's arrest. She and Washington, 36, who has an extensive criminal record, had just arrived in Florida. Police said both had counterfeit driver's licenses matching the fake names on the credit cards: Dimtra Smith and Byron Woods.

All three face felony charges including credit card forgery, fraud and identity theft. Lee and Washington were also charged with possession of counterfeit licenses.

On Tuesday, they remained at the Pinellas County Jail on $510,000 bail for Lee, $410,000 for Washington and $490,000 for Garran.

[Last modified August 16, 2006, 23:04:20]