A Tennessee woman has entered a guilty plea to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after prosecutors say she carried out a fraudulent scheme involving the transfer and sale of properties across North Carolina and other states, according to an announcement by the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, Russ Ferguson. The charade went on from October 2022 until August 2024 and saw the woman, Alicia England, 32, of Chattanooga, manipulate property records and personal information to illegitimately peddle real estate that was not rightfully hers.
In a court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan C. Rodriguez, England confessed to her role in the scheme where she falsified deeds and leveraged the identities of both the living and deceased to facilitate her criminal activities, crafting deceitful trust documents and using victims' personal identifying information (PII) to execute the sales, which involved at least 19 properties with a combined value tipping over $1.4 million, causing fraudulent quitclaim deeds to be filed purporting to transfer ownership to entities like the VGR Trust, named after a dead individual, then applying modern marketplaces like Facebook to lure buyers into her web of deception.
"England admitted in court today, the defendant stole the identities of various living and deceased individuals and used those identities and PII to open bank accounts, file fraudulent deeds, and enter into real estate sales for properties she did not actually own," explained the U.S. Attorney's Office in a press release. The process England admitted to invariably led to her negotiating sales and getting the proceeds funneled to personal bank accounts or under other names caught in her mesh of fraud.
Wire fraud can yield a maximum sentence of 20 years, while aggravated identity theft brings a mandatory consecutive two-year prison term following any other sentence, proclaiming loudly that justice weighs heavily upon such transgressive behaviors that strike at the trust underlying property rights and consumer confidence; England is currently out on bond pending the scheduling of her sentencing. Her release adds a note of unsettling pause to the victims awaiting the closure of a final judgment. The investigation's success is attributed to collaboration between the U.S. Secret Service, particularly the Charlotte Field Office headed by Special Agent in Charge Jason Byrnes, and the invaluable assistance of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Ryan leading the prosecution.
