The Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office says Masharad T. Carter has plead guilty to multiple counts of stealing $24,038.89 from Harrisburg based Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union(PSECU).
The charges stem from an investigation by the Dauphin County Criminal Investigation Division and Loss Prevention Officers from PSECU. According to court documents, between December 17, 2012 and November 6, 2013, Carter advertised on the social networking site “instagram”, under the pseudonym “CASHSTARCITY717”, that he could get PSECU account holders “free money if they provided their ATM card and pin numbers to him. On at least181 separate transactions, Carter deposited stolen or closed account checks into the individual PSECU accounts, only to immediately withdraw large sums of cash.
Each solicited complicit account holder would receive several hundred dollars as a result of the transaction and Carter would keep the sum of the remainder for himself. In nearly all cases, the account holders would then file a false report with police that their ATM cards had been stolen, lost or misplaced.
Last week Carter plead guilty to 14 counts of Theft by Deception, 14 counts of Access Device Fraud, 15 counts of Forgery, 7 counts of Conspiracy to Commit a Theft and Theft by Receiving Stolen Property. He was sentenced to less than 3, but not more than 6 months in Dauphin County Prison. However the judge gave Carter immediate parole and a 5 years probation.
On February, 19, seven of the acomplice account holders were additionally charged with crimes ranging from filing false reports to law enforcement, to theft and conspiracy to theft.
The investigation in the case is ongoing.