September 29, 2015-  Commonwealth v Sammee Childs:  Sammee D. Childs was found guilty of one count of Theft by Deception and one count of Criminal Conspiracy to commit Theft by Deception.  Childs was sentenced to 23 ½ months of probation and was ordered to pay $952.12 in restitution to the Pennsylvania State Employee’s Credit Union (PSECU). The charges stemmed from a multi-jurisdictional investigation spearheaded by Det. Bryan Jackson of the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Criminal Investigation Division.

The investigation began when PSECU became victim of an ATM check-depositing scam which had gained nationwide popularity. The scam worked like this. Local scammer Masharad Carter would advertise on his Instagram account that he could make anybody quick money so long as they had a PSECU debit card and pin number. Willing accomplices, like Childs, would contact Carter over his Instagram account, meet, and provide him with their PSECU debit card and pin number. Carter would then deposit stolen checks into their accounts and then immediately withdraw the money deposited in the form of cash. Carter would then give a portion of that money back to the account holder and instruct them to file a police report with police claiming that their debit card and pin number had been stolen and their bank account defrauded. This exploited a PSECU policy which permitted its members to withdraw a certain amount of cash before the check cleared. PSECU, which is member owned, incurred a loss of over $22,000 by Carter, alone.

During a trial before Dauphin County Judge Scott Arthur Evans, the Commonwealth successfully argued that Childs made an agreement with Carter to defraud PSECU by depositing stolen checks into Childs’s account and then immediately withdrawing portions of that deposit using Childs’s debit card and pin number. PSECU was alerted to the fraudulent activity and placed a hold on Childs’s account before he and Carter could withdraw all of the money they had fraudulently deposited with the bad checks. However, Carter and Childs were successful at withdrawing $952.12 before the account was frozen.

In 2012 this particular type of scam gained so much popularity over the internet and social media sites like Instagram that the FBI had actually alerted local law enforcement to be on the lookout for these types of transactions. When assigned to investigate these scams, which had been reported at multiple mid-state PSECU locations in 2012, Det. Jackson quickly identified many of the conspirators due to the fact that they were typically the account holders themselves. Carter and the rest of his co-conspirators all plead guilty, but Childs refused to do the same. During trial, Deputy District Attorney Anthony Corby was successful in proving that Childs was not a hapless victim of Carter as his defense attorney alleged, but was in fact a willing accomplice and co-conspirator. In the end, this get-rich-quick scheme was nothing more than theft.