The Bonnie and Clyde of credit card fraud

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, July, 1998 by Kristin Davis

The only clues to the Cullens' true identities--an anniversary card and some errand lists--were found in a night-stand drawer. The names on the arrest warrant were Edward M. Peters and Patricia Ann Mathews, names the pair had repeatedly used.

They were charged with financial crimes committed in Delaware in 1996 and 1997, but court records show a much longer criminal trail. Roger was arrested under an alias in Florida in 1992 on charges of fraud and forgery--and jumped bail. He pleaded guilty in 1986 to charges of breach of trust in Tennessee, and was sentenced to five years' probation and ordered to pay restitution of $12,500. He never fully paid, according to a 1990 arrest warrant. Since 1993 Florida has been after Cheryl for fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice.

"I'm sure there are many unsolved cases that we don't know about," says Garland. "A lot of banks don't even report fraud. They write off the loss and never file a report."

Anatomy of a bank fraud

The checks started bouncing on October 14, 1996. Over the previous seven days, "Patricia Mathews" had deposited 11 checks totaling $20,555 into her checking account at Wilmington Trust Co.--all written on a long-closed, out-of-state account in the name of William M. Cash. "Mathews" began drawing against the deposits right away, even though the checks hadn't cleared--and never would.

She hauled in nearly $19,000 from checks, ATM withdrawals and debit-card purchases before the account was frozen on October 15. The largest draws, ranging from $2,594 to $4,110, were cash advances at Atlantic City casinos and a racetrack in Dover. The Cullens didn't go to gamble. Rather, they were following the dictum of Depression-era thief Willie Sutton, who robbed banks because that's where the money was. "At a casino, you can draw out thousands at a time," explains Roger. "At an ATM, you can get only $500 a day."

The Cullens had opened the "William M. Cash" account at Membership Bank, in Portland, Ore., years earlier and had written a few bad checks before the bank closed it around 1994. But they still had a supply of leftover checks. (When we called the real William M. Cash, a historian listed in Who's Who, he had no inkling his identity had been filched.)

Wilmington Trust also took a hit in Edward Peters's name. I had gotten maybe $10,000 out of that account," Cullen says in the police interview. He also acknowledges similar frauds against the Ocean City and Denton branches of the First National Bank of Maryland and PNC Bank in Maryland.

Though neither Cash nor Peters was burned by the Cullens' crimes, either could have been pegged as a bad-check writer in a check-verification database, such as the ones maintained by TeleCheck and Equifax Check Services. Deadbeats are identified by name, account number, driver's-license number and sometimes social security number, so bad checks "could be tied back to the real consumer if the numbers are the same," says Jalinna Jones, a spokeswoman for TeleCheck. Merchants often consult such databases before accepting checks, and banks review them before opening new accounts.