A Texas woman has been thrown in the slammer after a decades-long scam, using a stolen identity to make her way through life. Elizabeth Ann Berbel, who also operated under a laundry list of aliases including Ana Elizabeth Gomez-Garcia and Tina Gomez-Manns, has been sentenced to two and a half years behind bars. She coughed up a guilty plea back on August 28, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office announcement.
Ordered by U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison, Berbel will serve a 6-month term for passport fraud, followed by an additional 24 months for aggravated identity theft. On top of her time, the 53-year-old has been hit with a restitution payment over three grand to compensate for her fraudulent antics.
During her sentencing, the court listened to the victim's heartfelt testimony. She described the emotional and professional havoc wreaked by Berbel's identity theft, as noted in the court's records. The scam artist started using the victim's Social Security number as early as 2001, effectively hijacking the victim's life without an ounce of permission.
It seemed the long con was up when Berbel was snared at the Laredo Port of Entry back in 2005. Flustered by multiple IDs, she sang like a canary, admitting none of the documents belonged to her. She claimed, after being nabbed, that she dodged authorities and slipped back into the U.S. with alternative documents she had tucked away in her car, in the statement obtained by the Justice Department.
Investigators didn't only dig up dirt on her false identities; they traced her real roots, identifying several biological relatives and piecing together the true identity of Berbel. Soon she will be transferred to a Bureau of Prisons facility.
The tag-team investigation by the Department of State, Social Security Administration, and Texas Department of Public Safety eventually put the cuffs on Berbel's run of identity deception. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Bajew, closing the chapter on this identity thief's fraudulent saga.
