A Maryland woman pleaded guilty Monday to participating in a scheme to use the stolen identification information of victims of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management data breach to obtain fraudulent personal and vehicle loans through Langley Federal Credit Union.
According to court documents, Karvia Cross, 39, of Bowie, “participated in and recruited others to engage in a fraudulent identity-theft scheme targeting LFCU.”
Court papers indicated the transactions were made at LFCU branches in Norfolk, Hampton and Chesapeake.
Cross pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. She faces a maximum of 30 years and a consecutive mandatory minimum of two years in prison.
She will be sentenced on Oct 26. Her co-defendant, Marlon McKnight, pleaded guilty to the same charges on June 11.
Information on the status of the cases of their other co-defendants was not immediately known.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, in 2015 and 2016, LFCU received numerous online membership and consumer loan applications in the names of stolen identities that were victims of the OPM data breach.
In 2015, OPM said there were “two separate but related cybersecurity incidents.” One is the theft of background investigation records of current, former and prospective federal employees and contractors, and the theft of “personnel data of 4.2 million current and former federal government employees,” according to OPM’s website.
How Cross and her co-defendants got a hold of some of those stolen identification information remains unclear.
LFCU approved and issued the requested memberships and loans prior to determining that they had been sought using the stolen personal identifying information of others, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
LFCU disbursed loan proceeds via checks and transfers into the checking and savings accounts opened through those fraudulent applications.
“Vehicle loan proceeds were disbursed by checks made payable to individuals posing as vehicle sellers, while personal loan proceeds were disbursed to LFCU accounts opened in connection with the fraudulent loan applications and transferred to accounts of others,” a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a news release. “Cross and others then accessed and withdrew the fraudulently obtained loan proceeds.”
