Calif. man sentenced in stolen-identity scam

A 61-year-old California man was sentenced Thursday for organizing a fraud ring that attempted to use stolen identities to make cash withdrawals from banks in Auburn and Portland.

Armon Leon Maiden, of Inglewood, Calif., received four years in prison and four years on supervised release after his conviction on charges of aggravated identity theft and bank fraud, according to a news bulletin issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Maiden provided his co-conspirators with fake checks and other documents so they could travel to banks and use the false identities to draw from compromised accounts, according to the release.

They landed at Sea-Tac Airport on Nov. 13, 2008, and worked their way south, stopping at a Wells Fargo in Auburn and another in Portland. A second attempt at a Portland Wells Fargo was made a day later. In each case, bank tellers refused to hand over the money.

The group was successful, however, at two others stops, securing $3,400.

Two of Maiden's co-conspirators were arrested when they returned to Sea-Tac during the afternoon of Nov. 14, 2008, to catch a flight back to California.

Maiden steered clear of the airport, opting to rent a car for his return trip. He was tracked down and arrested Nov. 24, 2008.

"Maiden had to arrange plane flights, obtain photographs of his co-schemers in advance so they could be used in producing the fake driver's licenses, get the insufficient funds checks that would be used in connection with the fake-identification documents, and put everything together in a ready-to-use form," Assistant United States Attorney Michael Scoville wrote to the court. "This was not a spur-of-the-moment crime to satisfy a drug addiction, but a deliberate assault on the banking system, an assault fueled by greed."

Miaden was indicted by the grand jury on Dec. 2, 2009, and pleaded guilty on March 5, 2010. The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service investigated the case.