For Wire Fraud, Mail Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft
HAMMOND - Vincent E. Prunty, age 35, of Chicago, Illinois was sentenced before U.S. District Court Judge James T. Moody for wire fraud, mail fraud, and aggravated identity theft, announced U.S. Attorney Kirsch.
Prunty was sentenced to 154 months in prison, 2 years of supervised release, and ordered to pay over $180,000 in restitution to various financial institutions and retailers.
Prunty pled guilty to wire fraud, mail fraud, and aggravated identity theft. According to documents in this case, Prunty’s scheme involved the theft of the personal identifying information of victims in more than 10 states and Canada. Prunty and co-defendants stole some of the victims’ information from a hospital in Arizona. The stolen records included birth dates, social security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, employment information, insurance carriers, treating physicians, and information about the people the victims listed as emergency contacts. Prunty and others opened fraudulent credit cards, bank accounts, and retail credit accounts on-line. In some instances, Prunty added himself as an authorized user on existing victim accounts.
The case was the result of an investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Toi Denise Houston.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
