When Pamela Juers returned to the parking lot at the top of the Thomas Jefferson Parkway walking trail on Route 53 near Monticello after a Saturday morning stroll in May, she was startled by the sight that greeted her.
“I instantly saw the passenger side window broken,” Juers recalled. Her purse, which she had tucked away on the back seat of her locked Town and Country minivan, was gone. Dismayed, Juers immediately reported the theft to Albemarle County Police, then spent the afternoon calling her bank and credit card companies, cancelling cards and flagging accounts, hoping to prevent any loss beyond the cash that had been in her wallet. Unfortunately for Juers, this was not a typical smash-and-grab.
Over the next two months, despite her rapid response to the theft and the fact she’d followed instructions from both police and security at her bank, Union First, the thieves were able to access not only her original bank account but the new one she opened in the wake of the crime. According to police, it’s likely that Juers and other victims across Central Virginia have been targeted by thieves mimicking the Felony Lane Gang, a Florida-based criminal enterprise whose complex and hard-to-track tactics have been frustrating police across the country.
In December 2012, 10 members of the so-called gang were indicted in federal court and subsequently pleaded guilty to various charges relating to defrauding hundreds of victims. But even with the original Felony Lane members behind bars, similar incidents have continued, including Juers’ case, which involved at least three other victims in Albemarle, Fredericksburg, and Richmond.
“We’ve been aware of this activity since about 2011,” said Albemarle Police spokeswoman Carter Johnson, noting that there’s been an uptick in such crimes in this area since 2013.
According to Johnson, the Felony Lane-style scam first appears to be a simple car break-in, but it doesn’t stop there.
“They’re looking for checkbooks and IDs,” she explained, noting that the perpetrators target parking lots where women are more likely to have left their purses behind—outside gyms, churches, or, in Juers’ case, walking trails. According to Johnson, the perpetrators find an accomplice who looks enough like the victim to impersonate them at the bank and allow her—victims are most often women—to withdraw funds using the account number and the ID. They get away with it by using the far lane at the bank drive-through. ”That’s why it’s called ‘the felony lane,’” Johnson said.
After the May car break-in, it was almost a week before Juers realized that alerting her bank to the theft hadn’t been sufficient to protect her account.
“There was a withdrawal of $1,900,” she said, describing how the thieves, presumably using a woman who resembled Juers and carrying her ID to make the transaction, simultaneously deposited a check for $2,400 from the account of another victim who’d been robbed in Richmond.
Stunned by the thieves’ return, Juers and her husband closed that bank account completely, opening a new account at the same bank. For two months, it appeared the trouble was behind them. That changed when Juers checked her balance in late July while she and her husband were on vacation, and Juers noticed a fraudulent transaction in the new account, this time a deposit for $1,900.
“I figured it was a bank mistake,” said Juers. Her husband called the bank and flagged the account, but two days later another $1,800 deposit appeared on her online statement. The checks were written from other victims’ accounts—and the same amount of money was withdrawn from Juers’ account a few days later. Using her stolen identification, the scammers had been able to gain access to the new account.
According to Juers, security videos from the bank and from the Thomas Jefferson Parkway lot were no help to police, because the scammers use stolen vehicles with separately stolen license plates. By the time any such surveillance video is reviewed, the thieves are long gone, and police have no way to trace them.
Union First spokesperson Bill Cimino said the bank is aware of the Felony Lane scam and is working with tellers to prevent future incidents. The bank offers thorough identity theft protection, he said, but also cautioned customers at all banks to check their statements frequently. “If you see anything suspicious, report it,” Cimino advised. “With something like this, if you’re monitoring the accounts, you’ll detect it fairly quickly. It protects you and other people.”
Juers confirms that the bank reimbursed all the money that was withdrawn from her account, and while that has been significant comfort, she remains troubled by the scam and urges others to be vigilant about leaving valuables behind in locked cars, even when it seems safe.
“Even though I got the money from the bank’s insurance, the crooks get it, too,” she said. “And they do it over and over and over.”