3 Held as Suspects in $10-Million Credit Card Counterfeit Scheme

A federal grand jury will be asked to bring charges next week against an Agoura Hills couple and a La Habra Heights man in connection with a $10-million fraud scheme that involved counterfeit driver’s licenses and credit cards, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said Friday.

“The Secret Service believes this is one of the largest credit card fraud rings in the United States,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Brent Whittlesey said.

Steven Grant, 36, and his wife, Debra Larkin Grant, 34, and Eugene Camper, 52, were arrested July 28 on suspicion of fraud, officials said. All three have previous convictions for credit card fraud.

Three other Southern Californians were convicted earlier in the case.

Whittlesey said the group collected account numbers found on stolen car rental forms and on receipts discarded in trash cans and used them to make phony credit cards. Then, using Department of Motor Vehicles equipment stolen in Kansas and Oklahoma, the suspects counterfeited driver’s licenses from those states to match the phony credit cards, he said.

They also recruited “runners”--typically people with criminal records--who used the counterfeit cards and licenses to make purchases, the federal prosecutor said.

Official documents show that federal agents tapped the home telephones that Camper and the Grants used to obtain account information.

The court documents indicate that since 1984, losses from the scheme include $3.8 million from accounts with Citicorp, $1.8 million from accounts with Wells Fargo and $1 million from First Card accounts.