The US Attorney has announced an effort to combat fraud against seniors in Southern Illinois and several recent convictions including a Centralia man.
64-year-old Danny Vaughn entered the plea agreement last week to a fraud charge. It was one of 15 charges included in a June 2020 indictment. The rest were dropped. Vaughn is scheduled to be sentenced on January 18th.
US Attorney Rachelle Aud Crow says Vaughn met a person on a dating site a few years ago whom he thought was a young woman that was interested in having a relationship with him. This person turned out to be a scammer. The scammer convinced Vaughn to engage in illegal activity, including purchasing items using stolen credit cards and then shipping the stolen items overseas and depositing counterfeit checks into his bank accounts and sending that money overseas.
Crowe also cited the recent guilty plea of 39-year-old Ashley McKinney of Cahokia who stole bank account information while working as a home healthcare provider for elderly persons in the Metro-East. A second person involved, 33-year-old Erica Rose of East St. Louis, previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison.
In another case, 33-year-old Jaykumar Patel of Florida pleaded guilty to assisting in a fraud scheme that victimized an elderly woman in Alton who had been told she needed to pay thousands of dollars to fix their stolen identities.
