A trio from Florida and Wisconsin are accused in an organized identity-theft scheme targeting women's purses in a variety of Lincoln locations, according to court documents.
Angela M. Pribbenow, 32, of Oregon, Wisconsin; Victory A. Ogiste, 22, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Raymone M. Davis, 24, of Lauderhill Lakes, Florida, have each been charged with identify theft of more than $5,000 in what a Lincoln police investigator said is a "Felony Lane Gang" case.Â
"Felony Lane Gang" affiliates are known to break into cars and use female members, sometimes with wigs and other disguises, to try and pass as the person whose checks or credit cards they've taken, Lincoln Police Investigator Donald Fosler said in affidavits for their arrests.
The term felony lane refers to the farthest lane of a bank's drive-through, which members of the gang are known to use in the scheme, according to the FBI.
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In this investigation, the purses of three women in Lincoln and one woman in Omaha were taken on Sept. 11, Fosler said.
The Lincoln women left their purses in their cars, which were parked at Antelope Park, Jim Ager Golf Course and the Holmes Lake Dog Run. A series of latent fingerprints on car doors and a check helped Fosler identify Ogiste, Davis and Pribbenow as the culprits, according to the investigator.
The day after the break-ins, Fosler found, a woman or women in an SUV tried to cash checks or make withdrawals of several thousand dollars on several accounts of the victims, and in several cases tried to fake transactions between the victims, he wrote.
Ultimately, only one of the fraudulent transactions was successful when the thieves cashed a check of $2,300 from one of the victims' accounts at a credit union.
Bank tellers during several of the transactions reported seeing a silver Mitsubishi SUV, which matched the description of the car from the Holmes Lake theft, Fosler said.
Pribbenow's driver's license photo matched the photo of a suspect during one of the failed attempts, he said.
Davis has been in the Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale since Sept. 28 on unrelated charges. Pribbenow and Ogiste had not been arrested as of Friday, a police spokeswoman said.
If convicted, each faces up to 20 years in prison.