NAPLES, Fla. - A Golden Gate Estates woman has been arrested on charges she stole her jail cellmate's debit card number and ran up $1,733 in charges, buying items in the jail commissary, making phone calls, bonding out of jail and letting a friend buy a plane ticket.
Crystal Dawn Stephens, 25, was charged Thursday with grand theft of $300-$500, fraud and illegal use of credit cards, and fraud by impersonating another or using another's identification. She was already in the county jail on a petty theft charge involving shoplifting.
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Her arrest report gives this account:
A 37-year-old Naples woman who was serving time for leaving the scene of a crash told deputies in April that she discovered she'd been a victim of identity theft when she received her bank statement. When she called her bank, she was told her debit card was used for Liberty Bail Bonds and an Allegiant Air plane ticket. She also learned it was used to purchase various items at the jail commissary and to make jail phone calls.
She called Liberty Bail Bonds to check on a suspicion that it was Stephens, her cellmate from March 28 to April 3, when she posted bond.
"Liberty Bail Bonds informed (her) that Crystal Stephens used her debit card number to bond out of jail," the arrest report says of the $1,000 bond.
The victim explained that before she turned over her debit card when she was booked into the jail, she wrote down the card number on a piece of paper and placed it in a drawer next to her jail bunk bed.
When detectives spoke with Stephens at the jail Thursday, a day after she was arrested on an unrelated petty theft charge involving shoplifting, she admitted taking her the debit card number to make purchases at the commissary, bond out of jail and let a friend buy an airline ticket.
If convicted of the new charges, she faces up to 15 years in state prison for fraud using another person's ID and five years on each of the other offenses.
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