3 indicted in credit card thefts

Lori Glenn

September 25, 2007 10:40 pm

— MOULTRIE — Three suspects in a fraud ring that centered on stolen credit cards numbers from Applebee’s restaurant earlier this year have been indicted in Colquitt County Superior Court.
The suspects are charged with stealing the numbers and using them to purchase prepaid cell phone accounts, likely resold on the black market. Police investigators had said that more than 100 credit and debit card numbers have been stolen from this area to create these fraudulent accounts.
Two Applebee's servers, Yvonne Andrea Neal, 22, 401 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, and Truansheay Aundralene Huckaby, 28, 530 Edmondson Road, allegedly supplied Jerome Byron Mitchell, 39, 912 Fourth Ave. S.E., with the stolen numbers. Mitchell allegedly used the information to purchase Alltel accounts.
On June 15, fraud investigator for Alltel Communications Michael Relyea reported to police that multiple prepaid cell phone accounts were fraudulently activated in the Moultrie area with stolen credit card numbers resulting in a $10,000 loss to Alltel. Authorities said Applebee's restaurant is the source for the stolen credit card numbers.
Huckaby and Neal each face two counts of financial identity fraud. Mitchell faces seven counts of financial transaction card fraud and one count financial identity fraud.
In other felony indictments, a former Willie J. Williams Middle School math teacher Stephen Parks Warnock, 32, 2659 Sumner Road, was indicted on one count of criminal attempt to commit the crime of enticing a child for indecent purposes.
Warnock, also a seventh grade head football coach and an assistant coach for varsity wrestling, a former probation officer with the Department of Juvenile Justice and church deacon, allegedly sent a 14-year-old former student several instant messages though a social networking website. The girl’s mother allegedly intercepted the messages and reported them to the sheriff's department.
Warnock resigned from the school system soon after his arrest.