Man to Be Sentenced in Credit Card Fraud Case : Crime: Police suspect Terry Len Fowler may have charged as much as several hundred thousand dollars with stolen account numbers.

A 20-year-old Moorpark man will be sentenced today for using stolen credit card numbers for about $4,000 in charges at shops and restaurants in a weekend spending spree across the county, authorities said.

But Ventura County sheriff’s detectives suspect that Terry Len Fowler also has used stolen credit cards for several hundred thousand dollars in charges for items such as a trip to Las Vegas on a chartered Learjet and $2,700 suits for himself and a friend, Detective Bill Stovall said.

“He was trying to live the life of Donald Trump,” said Ventura County Probation Officer Mary Mall, who has been asked to recommend a sentence for Fowler.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones is scheduled to sentence Fowler at 9 a.m. on 10 felony counts related to the $4,000 in fraudulent credit card charges, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Simon said.

Stovall said he will ask the district attorney’s office to file additional charges against Fowler next week.

The maximum sentence for credit card fraud is six years and eight months in prison and a $10,000 fine plus restitution, Simon said.

Stovall said his case against Fowler will include not only the trip to Las Vegas, but also a flight to Reno. Camarillo pilot Dave Dwyhalo, 32, said Fowler hired him to fly him and three friends to Reno on July 14, 1990.

Although a credit card company initially approved the $1,100 cost of the trip, “four months later they yanked it out of my bank account,” Dwyhalo said.

“We went up there at midnight on a Friday night,” Dwyhalo said, adding that Fowler had first asked for a Learjet. “He wanted it fully stocked for wine and catering, and I told him that I couldn’t do this at 10 p.m.”

“The kids were dressed in Levis and shirts except for him,” Dwyhalo said. “He was in a black tuxedo.”

Fowler was initially arrested by Oxnard police in connection with credit card charges made during the last weekend of July, 1990. Subsequently, the Ventura, Camarillo and Simi Valley police departments also discovered that Fowler had run up fraudulent charges in their cities the same weekend, Ventura Police Sgt. Bob Anderson said.

“I’ve never had a report that included so many different agencies working on it,” said Mall of the probation office.

On Oct. 18, 1991, Fowler pleaded guilty to the charges relating to the weekend spree, but the district attorney’s office did not know that California Highway Patrol officers had stopped Fowler three days earlier for suspected drunk driving, Simon said.

During a routine check of Fowler’s car, the CHP officers discovered lists of more than 300 credit card numbers, blank checks from several Los Angeles-based corporations and several wallets containing phony identification cards, Sheriff’s Detective Bill Gentry said.

The CHP officers told Stovall and Gentry, who began an investigation. A search of Fowler’s apartment, which police said he shares with his father, turned up a list of about 100 different credit card numbers, Gentry said.

Detectives believe that Fowler stole the credit card numbers from a computer store in Camarillo where he once worked, Gentry said. They believe that he took the blank checks from another former employer, a Moorpark company that prints checks, Gentry said.