The defendants charged are: Chouman Emily Syrilien, 25, of Lauderdale Lakes, Arrington Basil Segu, 28, of Miami, Carlos Antonio Alexander, 24, of Orlando, Angel Arcos, 23, of Pompano Beach, Shantegra La’Shae Godfrey, 23, of Deerfield Beach, and Monique Smith, 31, of Pompano Beach. Alexander is currently incarcerated. Two defendants remain at a large.
According to the indictment, Syrilien was employed by Interactive Response Technologies (IRT), a company located in Margate, Fla. IRT provides staffing for call centers to handle direct sales and customer inquiries for AT&T. Syrilien allegedly provided a co-conspirator with the personal identifying information from multiple AT&T customer files. Segu also allegedly provided personal identifying information of numerous individuals to the co-conspirator.
Alexander, Godfrey, and Smith and were added as “authorized users” on victims’ credit or debit card accounts or bank accounts to access the accounts of persons whose personal identifying information had been stolen. Once a co-conspirator’s name was added as an “authorized user,” the bank and/or credit card company was directed to mail additional debit or credit cards bearing the names of these newly added “authorized users” to their addresses or addresses under their control, all without the true account holder's knowledge or consent. The defendants used these credit and debit cards to make purchases or obtain money. Alexander, Smith and Godfrey each made both retail purchases as well as cash advances in excess of $24,000, $12,000 and $8,200, according to the indicment.
The charging documents say that defendant Arcos allowed his personal information to be used to open a bank account to further the fraudulent activity.
All of the defendants were charged with one count of conspiracy, and several were charged individually with access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum of thirty years in prison for the conspiracy charge, a maximum of ten years in prison for the access device fraud charge, and a mandatory term of two years in prison for each aggravated identity theft charge, at least one of which must be served consecutive to any other prison term.