Prison is the next stop for bold thief of identities

After her arrest for theft and fraud, Elnetta Denise Brown kept right on taking people's information and using it to enrich herself. Wednesday, a judge gave her three years.

By AMY HERDY

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 5, 2001

TAMPA -- Out of jail and awaiting trial on hundreds of identity theft and fraud charges, Elnetta Denise Brown didn't miss a beat, investigators say.

The Tampa woman got a job at AAA, tapped into its national data base and began stealing more identities from the auto club's members, they said.

Wednesday, Brown was sentenced by Hillsborough Circuit Judge Daniel Perry to three years in prison. Brown, who faced multiple identity theft and credit card fraud charges, pleaded guilty to those charges as well as a probation violation charge.

Prosecutors said the sentence is fair, despite the amount of turmoil Brown has caused her victims by stealing personal information and charging thousands of dollars in purchases in their names.

"It's difficult for them, making all those phone calls, writing all those letters, doing everything you have to do to get your credit straightened up," said Assistant State Attorney Mark Lewis.

In March, detectives said Brown had stolen the identities of 375 people, and they charged her with grand theft, credit card fraud and identity theft. They said she had lived off the bogus credit for four years. She pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced to 14 years of probation, restitution and court costs.

While that case was pending, Brown, 29, got a job at AAA Auto Club South in Tampa and was using the auto club information to open lines of credit at stores such as JCPenney and Target, investigators said, where she would buy gift certificates for hundreds of dollars and then sell them inside the malls at half price.

She was arrested at a mall on Nov. 9. Detectives found several more gift certificates in her car, personal information taken from AAA, credit card applications and newspaper ads for other jobs that entailed data entry. Before the fraud arrests, Brown's only criminal history in Hillsborough involved a domestic violence charge in 1994. She was sentenced to one year of probation on that charge. Brown's attorney, Brian Gonzalez, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

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