A 53-year-old man convicted of fraud successfully deferred reporting to a federal prison complex in East North Carolina while seeking medical treatment, prosecutors said.
That is until he gave his parole officer the slip.
Shawn Allen Farmer lost his warranted release on Feb. 18 after investigators discovered he had made unauthorized trips to Hawaii and Las Vegas, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a press release. U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle ordered him to report to prison and serve his sentence as a punishment.
Farmer, who is from Greenville, North Carolina, was arrested on Jan. 19 and could not be reached for comment. His attorney declined to comment in a statement to McClatchy News on Feb. 23.
A judge had sentenced Farmer to 15 months in prison in May 2021 and ordered him to pay $42,783 in restitution after pleading guilty for his role in a credit fraud ring. The judge advised Farmer to serve his sentence at FCI Butner, a federal prison complex about 30 miles north of Raleigh, and told him to report to jail by July 26, 2021.
But prosecutors said he was “released to seek medical care before turning up to jail”. They did not comment on his medical condition.
Under the terms of his release, Farmer would be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Bureau and would not be allowed to leave the eastern district of North Carolina. He was also not allowed to contact his co-defendants, apply for new lines of credit or government benefits, and send or receive mail for other people.
It wasn’t until January that members of the Covid Fraud Benefits Task Force realized Farmer had violated the terms of his release agreement.
Prosecutors said he went to Hawaii, where he got a driver’s license, and Las Vegas, where he reportedly paid out $92,000 in casinos.
“It is significant that when Farmer identified himself for tax purposes, he used a Social Security number that did not belong to him,” the US Attorney’s Office said. “At the time of these events, Farmer still owed more than $42,000 on his federal criminal conviction.”
An arrest warrant was subsequently issued against him.
The case against Farmer dates back to November 2020, when he was accused along with several others of running a credit fraud ring with stolen identities. The alleged plan involved several members of the same Wake County family, including a real estate agent and an online pastor, The News & Observer reported.
Prosecutors said the group opened credit card accounts with stolen identities and cashed them in with prepaid card purchases before payments went into default. Victims of the fraud, which lasted from July 2017 to August 2021, included Lowe’s credit card provider Synchrony Bank, Capital One and Discover, according to The N&O.
Charging documents also show that Farmer was accused of submitting false documents alongside several applications for a loan for economic injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Farmer pleaded guilty to charges of false, fictitious and fraudulent claims, bank fraud and complicity in January 2021.
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