Identity theft charges have been pressed against a woman named Annie Ella Rozinski for fraudulent credit card use and using a fake driver's license in order to cash a check she managed to steal from someone's mailbox.
Law enforcement in Sauk County, Wisconsin allege that the 27-year-old woman from Mauston used the information she gathered from the dark web on how to steal identities so she can profit from it.
The Start of the Investigation
Police in Mauston and Lake Delton were able to find out about the fraud activities through store surveillance footage and through interviews.
Other than Rozinski, two more men are allegedly involved, and they are facing separate charges.
It all started in December when an insurance company by the name of Baraboo reported that they sent a check worth $1,586, but the willful recipient of the check said that they never actually received it.
Instead, the check was cashed in by someone at a Wisconsin Dells Mexican store.
Later on, Gary L. Jordan, a man from Wisconsin Dells, had an interview with the police and gave them information that the person who cashed in the check was Rozinski.
According to the complaint, he said that Rozinski is capable of creating identifications that look like documents issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
He claimed he knew this because Rozinski had made one for him.
The police got a hold of a video from the surveillance cameras of the place in which the check was cashed, and the person who verified that Rozinski was the person cashing the check was her probation agent.
Mailbox Shopping
In an interview with the police, Rozinski said that a 28-year-old man from Mauston by the name of Kevin M. Maun told her about a method called "mailbox shopping," which means looking for documents with personally identifying information in mailboxes of random people.
Once they found something, they would try to acquire further identifying information from the dark web, such as Social Security numbers or a driver's license.
With that information, Maun would then allegedly create a fake identification card that can be used for credit cards or cashing checks.
The police assume that Maun and Rozinski are guilty of purchasing at various businesses in the Lake Delton area by using another person's credit card.
The Charges
Rozinski is charged with three counts of felony forgery, three counts of identity theft and two counts of credit card fraud.
At the moment, she is at the Juneau County Jail and is slated to appear in the Sauk County Circuit Court on March 20.
As for the other two people allegedly involved, Maun was charged with receiving stolen property, misdemeanor obstruction of an officer, and two counts of felony bail jumping, and Jordan was charged with misdemeanor obstruction of an officer and felony forgery.
The police think that Jordan cashed a check at the same store Rozinski did, and when he was interviewed about it, he tried to put the blame on Rozinski.
The video footage, however, apparently shows him cashing the check.
