The case against the 27-year-old is three years in the making, court documents show. Her mother-in-law contacted West Valley City police in 2005 to report stolen mail, unauthorized deposits in her credit union account and charges she didn't make on credit cards, according to charging documents filed today in 3rd District Court.
The woman's mother-in-law found someone obtained a $7,500 loan in her name. West Valley police traced the woman's daughter-in-law to the crime after police in two other states contacted Utah after linking the same woman to fraud cases in California and Oregon, the documents state.
In 2006, police in Martinez, Calif., discovered the suspect had defrauded a man she had met through the Internet on a fan page for the Oakland Raiders football team. The two apparently met in 2005 to attend a football game and the woman asked the man for bank account information so she could transfer her mother-in-law's paychecks to him for an undisclosed reason. He agreed to wire the money back to her in Utah.
The man reported wiring a total of $14,343 to the woman from his accounts, after he saw the checks post through his Internet banking site. The checks later bounced, however, and the man's account fell into a negative balance of $8,000, court documents state.
In a separate 2006 case, police in North Powder, Ore., connected the suspect to depositing forged checks into her former neighbor's bank account. The neighbor alledgedly lent the woman $4,000. The suspect asked the neighbor for her checking account information so she could make deposits to repay her. The neighbor gave the suspect her bank information, and the suspect deposited forged checks into the account, according to documents.
Police connected the woman to theft from her mother-in-law after noticing forged signatures in the California and Oregon cases matched signatures passed on the mother-in-law's checks, the documents state.
The woman is charged with a series of second- and third-degree felonies, including identity fraud, communications fraud, theft and forgery.
