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The items were then sold with the help of an entrepreneur who operated an online shopping site, they said.
Nathanael Foucault, Johnathan “Junzie-J” Persaud, and Fabiola “Lady Fab” Mompoint passed the cards to a quintet of shoppers who bought the items at department stores in New Jersey and the city with the stolen credit cards, an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Manhattan alleges.
The brands of choice: Chanel, Dior, Fendi and Hermes, it says.
Some of the items were resold on LuxurySnob.com, which touts itself as an online sales outlet for “pre-owned luxury items,” the indictment says.
The site operator at the time, Johnny “Ace” Damus, directed shoppers to buy specific luxury items in certain quantities, it says.
Damus and an unidentified co-conspirator then sold the items on LuxurySnob, according to the indictment.
“The defendants took advantage of the public trust we place in U.S. Postal Service employees for their own financial gain,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York said.
Federal agents seized the postal workers on charges of access device fraud, bank fraud, and other offenses.
The accused shoppers were still at large, they said.
The stolen credit cards were swiped from the mail stream before they could reach customers, Williams said.
“After obtaining the stolen credit cards, members of the conspiracy activated the cards using stolen personally identifiable information (“PII”) of the intended recipients,” he said.
Williams cited the work of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General and the NYPD.
The investigation was continuing, federal authorities said.
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