NEW ORLEANS -- Two men used account numbers found in trash and a Utah-based Internet go-between in a scheme to steal at least $1 million from Nissan, Citgo and Lucent, according to the FBI and the Internet company.
Raymond P. Vincent Jr., 20, of Kenner, La., and Gerren Elliot Jackson, 19, of New Orleans, were arrested on federal wire fraud charges last week after the FBI filed a complaint against them in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.Both are in a Louisiana prison pending the outcome of a detention hearing.
The eight-page FBI complaint that served as the arrest warrant specifies only three counts of wire fraud against Nissan Motors Corp., Citgo Petroleum Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc.
But it cites more than 100 fraudulent transfers from the companies' accounts from Jan. 29 through March 22.
Neither the U.S. Attorney's Office nor the FBI would comment on the case. David Heaps, president of Authorize.net Corp. of Provo, said company computers caught the scheme immediately, and Authorize.net officials called the FBI.
"The reason they got such a high number is we were working with the FBI. . . . They wanted some good hard evidence. So they have that now. They certainly have it," said Heaps Sunday.
According to the FBI complaint, Vincent became a customer of Authorize.net in July, saying he wanted to use it to bill customers of his record and cellular phone companies, Pegasus Entertainment and 21st Century Communication.
The address in court papers for both companies is a retail mailbox store in a Kenner strip mall.
Heaps said they began with legitimate debit and payment requests.
But starting in January, they began turning in requests using the Nissan, Lucent and Citgo accounts, under the names of CompU Enterprises, Willowstreet Electronics and GSN Enterprises.
Vincent telephoned and faxed Authorize.net with what he said were official contacts who could give the nod to the withdrawals, the court papers said.
Debit requests from a Nissan account, made under the name CompU Enterprises, added up to nearly $120,000, the complaint said. It said Vincent submitted $500,000 in debits under the Willowstreet name but using a Lucent account number, and $266,000 against a Citgo account under the name GSN.
Heaps wouldn't say just what clued Authorize.net to the scheme. "I don't want to tip off any other criminals. Why would I want to put thoughts and ideas in others' heads?" he said.
As far as he knows, he said, it's the first attempt to use his company to defraud others.
"It isn't revolutionary. These guys were not brilliant," he said. What they did is much the same as finding a credit card receipt at a restaurant and using the number, he said.
Spokeswomen for Citgo, which is based in Tulsa, Okla., and Nissan, based in California, declined to comment, citing an ongoing FBI investigation and security concerns.
Spokesman John Skalko said that as far as he knows, this is the first time such a thing has happened to Lucent, a major international provider of communications and business software.
He said Lucent, based in Murray Hill, N.J., expects to get back the stolen money and has taken steps to prevent any similar "intrusions."
He wasn't told what those steps were, he said. "If they told me and I told people about them, they wouldn't be safeguards any more."