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OGDEN — A former employee of a northern Utah credit union has been arrested and accused of stealing personal account information of customers and giving it to others who fraudulently spent money from those accounts, according to police.
Perla Esmeralda Ramirez-Coronado, 22, was charged Wednesday in 2nd District Court with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony, and 18 counts of identity fraud, a third-degree felony.
The investigation began in January when North Ogden police responded to a residence on a report that a ledger belonging to Ramirez-Coronado was found in the home, according to a police affidavit. It does not say how police believe the ledger ended up in the residence.
“The complainant reported Perla worked for a credit union, and the information in the ledger appeared to be bank and personal identifier type information of members,” according to charging documents.
Detectives determined Ramirez-Coronado had worked for a credit union in Ogden and the case was turned over to Ogden police. A detective reviewed the ledger and confirmed it contained the account numbers of 16 credit union members, the affidavit states. It does not say what credit union she worked for.
“The personal information included a detailed profile on each member to include: full name, date of birth, last four digits of their Social security number, and home address,” the charges state.
Police learned that Ramirez-Coronado had “abruptly quit” her job. Detectives then discovered that “a total of five fraudulent transactions have occurred on the accounts in the ledger for a total loss of $13,010. The fraud occurred in multiple cities in Minnesota. There are an additional two victims who had their personal identifiers, and bank account numbers stolen who were not in the ledger. The credit union sustained an additional $5,946 loss on those two accounts,” the charges state.
“In addition to the fraud on the account, several of the victims have had their identity and credit used to fraudulently purchase vehicles in Arizona and Minnesota,” the charges say.
Detectives learned that the victims listed on the ledger and the two who are not all “had made contact with the call center while Perla would have been working. The fraud on the victims’ accounts who were not in the ledger occurred in the same area of Minnesota, by the same group of co-conspirators identified in this scheme,” according to the charges.
“It appears Perla obtained the identity and bank account information of the members with the intent to distribute the information to co-conspirators with the intent to commit fraud,” police wrote in the report.
One of those individuals was identified as a man who previously served federal prison time for fraud, according to charging documents.
“He was on supervised release and traveled to Utah to be with Perla. (They) were observed in Salt Lake in a vehicle that was fraudulently purchased in Arizona with the identity of one of the victims,” the charges state.
The couple then went to Minnesota where they were stopped by police on Feb. 8 “in another vehicle that had been fraudulently purchased with information from one of the credit union victims. The male who was driving the vehicle had a fraudulent New York driver’s license. He ran from the scene and was not apprehended at that time,” according to the court documents.
Inside the car Ramirez-Coronado was pulled over in, police found keys to another vehicle that was also “fraudulently purchased with the use of one of the Utah credit union victims,” according to the charges.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no charges had been filed in Utah against the man whom Ramirez-Coronado was allegedly with.
