A Michigan man, Leroy Artemus Tolbert III, 35, from Brownstown Township, has entered a guilty plea to a charge of wire fraud. Court documents revealed that Tolbert engaged in a scheme to defraud Lowe's Companies, Inc. and numerous retail stores across Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of West Virginia, Tolbert fraudulently applied for a Lowe's credit card by using a company name and placed another person's identity as an authorized user on the account. Tolbert then went on to wrongly purchase thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, with the total fraud amounting to $100,000. He has since agreed to fully pay back the $100,000 as restitution.
Investigations into Tolbert's activities were carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The intricate fraud case included several retail stores within the regions of Wheeling and Morgantown, West Virginia, as stated in a report by CBS News Detroit.
Tolbert now faces a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for his actions. A federal district court judge will deliberate over his sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines among other statutory factors. The prosecution is underway by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jarod Douglas, and U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Mazzone presided over the plea. A date for sentencing has yet to be officially set.
