Coates Gets 4 Years for Credit Card Chaos

BALTIMORE, MD – Wanisha D. Coates, 25, of Baltimore, is trading the designer lifestyle she allegedly funded through fraud for four years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar handed down the sentence today, followed by five years of supervised release, after Coates pleaded guilty to bank fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. The case, a tangled web of stolen identities and re-encoded cards, spanned multiple states and left a trail of unpaid bills and broken promises.

Federal prosecutors detailed a scheme dating back to at least the winter of 2012, where Coates and her associates manufactured counterfeit credit cards using stolen account numbers. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill scams; the crew was allegedly using the ill-gotten gains to splurge on high-end goods – Gucci shoes, Louis Vuitton handbags, Christian Louboutin heels, and designer clothes from Neiman Marcus. The operation wasn’t confined to Maryland. On November 2, 2012, Coates and her crew hit a Target in Fairfax, Virginia, making fraudulent purchases that initially led to her arrest there.

But Coates didn’t stay behind bars for long. She skipped her court hearing, triggering a bench warrant for her arrest. A year later, on April 2, 2013, a Maryland State Trooper pulled her over in Centreville for a traffic stop. The smell of marijuana led to a search, uncovering a stash of altered gift cards, credit cards, and “ReloadIt” stored value cards, all re-written with compromised account information. Despite the evidence, she continued to evade justice.

The net tightened in Easton, Maryland, on January 11, 2014, when police arrested a co-conspirator, Domenique Miller, while attempting to purchase multiple gift cards at a Staples store. A search of the motel room where Miller’s girlfriend (and Coates) was staying revealed a potent odor of marijuana and a treasure trove of 44 fraudulently altered credit and stored value cards. In a brazen attempt to deceive law enforcement, Coates identified herself as her mother, “Wanda C. Redd,” during the arrest and subsequent court appearance. It didn’t work.

The escalating pattern of deceit and criminal activity continued. On March 13, 2014, Anne Arundel County Police responded to a motel in Linthicum after a man reported being slashed with a knife by Coates. During the arrest, officers seized another 27 altered cards and a device used to read, erase, and rewrite magnetic strips – the tools of her trade. While the Virginia case was dismissed on May 22, 2014, Coates was immediately taken into federal custody, only to abscond from a halfway house just two weeks later, violating the terms of her release and prompting the issuance of a federal arrest warrant.

The sentencing was announced jointly by United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, and a coalition of law enforcement agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the United States Secret Service – Baltimore Field Office, the U.S. Marshal Service, the Maryland State Police, Fairfax County Police, Easton Police, Anne Arundel County Police, and Talbot County State’s Attorney Scott G. Patterson. Coates’s scheme, fueled by greed and sustained by deception, has finally come to an end, leaving her with a hefty prison sentence and a future far removed from the designer labels she once coveted.