PORTLAND, Maine — A man from Bronx, New York, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court to 10 months in prison for credit card fraud.
Gyadeen P. Ramdihall, 28, also was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay nearly $18,000 in restitution along with his co-defendant, Jervis A. Hillaire, 26, of Menifee, California.
Menifee was sentenced in June to 13 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
Both men pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to commit access device fraud.
The duo first came to the attention of Maine law enforcement on Sept. 5, 2013, when a clerk at a Kittery convenience store reported Hillaire and a woman, who has not been charged, “were using multiple gift cards to purchase different gift cards, each for several hundred dollars,” according to the complaint. “If a card was declined [the woman] and Hillaire would reduce the amount of the requested gift card and try again.”
Kittery police seized 38 counterfeit credit cards and several thousand dollars in electronics and gift cards from the rental car in which the woman, Hillaire and Ramdihall were traveling, the complaint said. The trio was not charged at the time.
Most of the cards were counterfeit because “they were printed with toner printing, contained embossing defects and because the bank identification number printed on the card did not match the number embossed on the card,” the complaint said. The cards also were used on Sept. 5 to purchase more than $1,700 in merchandise from Best Buy in Topsham and nearly $3,200 in electronics from the Apple store in South Portland.
Hillaire and Ramdihall were stopped by Ohio State Police on Oct. 10, 2013, according to the complaint. During a search of their rental car, 17 fake credit cards were found in the trunk under the spare tire. As of Sunday, the men were not facing federal charges in that state.
The duo returned to Maine and were arrested in late January 2014 after using four differents cards at a Biddeford Wal-Mart to buy a $300 gift card; a different credit card to buy more than $95 in baby formula and sundries; and three different cards to purchase two iPod Touch devices for more than $300 each, according to court documents.
Both men faced up to 10 years in prison and fine of up to $250,000.