Nine people indicted in money laundering case involving jail inmates

HAMILTON COUNTY, Ohio (WKRC) – Nine men are accused of running an elaborate scam in Hamilton County.

Parisian Fitzhugh, Georvaugh Campbell, Charles Harrell, Demontez Harrison, Dyerico Johnson, Dominic Lindsey, Jerome McCoy, Cortez Reed, and Eric Sanks have all been indicted.

Some of the suspects had access to stolen credit card information and used it to put money into the accounts of jail inmates.

Investigators say the inmates would then use the funds deposited into their account and have the jail cut a check to a family member or friend on the outside.

Julie Wilson with the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office explained the scam.

“The inmate would then say to the people in the jail to process those payments and what not, they would say, ‘hey I’ve got $500 on my account. I don’t want or need that, but I would like to give that to my mom or my girlfriend’ or whoever and then the jail would process that and actually issue a check from the Sheriff’s department for the amount that showed on the account and then the person on the outside would actually receive the money,” Wilson said.

The jail’s social services department started seeing an increase in activity for inmates wanting to send money to a loved one. At some point,the credit card transactions would bounce. Eventually, the investigation started and lasted for two years. In all, $4,000 was laundered.

The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office has seen cases of people using stolen credit card information to launder money before, but not quite like this.

“We’ve had cases where people would use stolen credit cards and then launder it by buying a Nordstrom gift card or a Walmart gift card or whatever kind of gift card and then use those gift cards to launder money, but this is a little bit different, actually taking place in the Justice Center,“ Wilson said.

The Hamilton County Justice Center has made changes to make sure this does not happen again. The jail looks closely scrutinizes inmates and the recipient of the funds. Inmates are only allowed one credit card transaction per month.

The maximum an inmate can now send per transaction is $200. In the past it was $500.

A spokesman for the Sheriff’s office says there was no loss to taxpayers. Instead, the Justice Center’s third-party financial vendor took the loss.

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