ben shekelberg 
A Florida man will serve 27 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing the identities of residents, applying for credit cards in their names and using the U.S. Postal Service’s notification system to intercept the cards at the victim’s homes.
Kevens Louis, 26, of Plantation, Florida, was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns. He will serve one year of supervised release after he is released from prison, said Christina DiLorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for Attorney General Andrew Lelling.
Louis pled guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, she said.
He and three co-conspirators were charged in the scam in April. The four accessed victims’ names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses on the ‘dark web’ and applied for and received credit cards. They then used the U.S. Postal Service Informed Delivery to track the credit cards so they could intercept them when they were delivered to the addresses of the victims, DiLorio-Sterling said.
The men traveled across the East Coast committing the fraud in a variety of states including Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They used the credit cards to withdraw money at ATMs and to purchase gift cards and other items for resale at stores, she said.
Other defendants Lucson Appolon and Peter Belony previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and were sentenced to two years in prison. Fred Alcius is a fugitive, she said.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with the assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations and police departments in Harvard; Norfolk; Sherborn; Weston; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Kittery, Maine and Plantation Florida, she said.
