Naperville man gets 9 years for leading credit-card mail theft ring
A Naperville man who was the ringleader of a mail and identity-theft conspiracy was sentenced Monday to nine years in federal prison for stealing people's credit cards out of the mail and using them to make more than $462,000 in fraudulent purchases.
Davey Hines, 30, pleaded guilty in July 2022 to four counts of conspiracy, receipt of stolen mail, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Federal authorities alleged that between June 2018 and December 2019, he led 10 other people in the conspiracy. He recruited U.S. Postal Service workers to steal credit cards and other financial instruments from the mail and turn them over to Hines and several other people in exchange for cash.
According to an indictment, they used the Snapchat app to communicate, including sending pictures of the cards and other information.
Hines and several co-defendants would then obtain the customers' personal identifying information, including dates of birth and Social Security numbers, to fraudulently activate the stolen cards.
They stole more than 657 credit cards, federal authorities say.
At the time, Hines was on court-supervised release on a federal bank-fraud conviction.
Hines has been held without bail since his arrest in February 2021.
The judge also ordered Hines to pay restitution to the financial institutions that issued the stolen credit cards.