Unsuccessful Fraudulent Check Cashing Leads to Significant Counterfeiting Operation

When Jade Ingalls walked out of a grocery store in Pensacola, Florida after unsuccessfully cashing a check, he didn’t realize he had left both his wallet and a major clue to cracking a massive identity fraud scheme.

An alert clerk contacted the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office after he went through Jade’s wallet hoping to find contact information and instead found five identification cards with the same photo and different names.

A deputy Sheriff was dispatched and while he was interviewing employees, Darla Ingalls, whose ties to Jade are unclear, attempted to retrieve the wallet. The deputy told an employee to tell the woman that the wallet could only be given to its owner.

The woman drove away. The deputy followed.

When the deputy stopped the vehicle, Darla Ingalls gave the deputy a Bahamas driver’s license and an insurance card, each with a different name. She must have sensed her fraudulent identity wasn’t holding up with the deputy because she then presented a Washington State driver’s license with her real name. A search of the vehicle revealed three more licenses, these from Montana, with Darla Ingalls’ picture and different names.

But the deputy’s search of the vehicle wasn’t done yet. He pulled ten Department of Defense Contractor checks, a fugitive recovery badge and an Associated Press Identification card from the vehicle. According to the Pensacola News Journal, the police report stated that the checks were being taken to separate businesses to be cashed facilitated by the fraudulent IDs.

After the pair was arrested, a search of their Pensacola home uncovered even more real and counterfeit documents including birth certificates, death certificates and colleges degrees. Computer equipment used to manufacture fake identification documents were itemized and recovered by the Sheriff’s Office. While these discoveries were important, most distressing was the seizing fraudulent National Security ID cards. The Associated Press might be a little irritated by having Darla running around with its identity credential, but access to the NSA has extreme security concerns. While there is no evidence that the cards would have passed through NSA security checkpoints, it raises questions about how the pair acquired the templates for the fraudulent IDs in the first place.

Jade and Darla exploited most of the security vulnerabilities that low standards for document authentication afforded them. They cashed checks using fraudulent identities, had the ability to impersonated reporters and potentially National Security officials and one more – buy a gun after being convicted of a felony.

Jade Ingalls told a deputy that he used fraudulent identification in a fictitious identity to buy a gun since legally he couldn’t do it with his felony record.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives filed a complaint in federal court against Jade for the possession of a gun in addition to charges filed by the County Sheriff’s Office.