A Thurston County juvenile court commissioner sentenced a 17-year-old former Olympia McDonald’s employee to 60 days in juvenile jail Monday for crimes related to using a credit card skimming device to steal more than $13,000 from drive-thru customers.
Thurston County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Wayne Graham said the teen, formerly employed at the McDonald’s in the 700 block of Plum Street, will serve about an additional week at the Thurston County juvenile jail because of credit for time served. Graham said the young man has been incarcerated since his Nov. 16 arrest because his parents refused to post his bail.
Thurston County Juvenile Court Commissioner Indu Thomas handed down the sentence Monday morning after the defendant pleaded guilty to two juvenile counts of forgery and two juvenile counts of identity theft.
After the arrest, detectives discovered stolen merchandise worth more than $13,000 in the teen’s home, Graham said. As part of his sentence, he must pay full restitution to all of his victims, Graham added.
Olympia police detectives began an investigation that led to the arrest after receiving information from the Washington State Employees Credit Union that members were filing claims for fraudulent use of credit cards, but they hadn’t lost their card, Sgt. Dan Smith has said.
Detectives discovered that all the people had recently used those cards at the same McDonald’s. After police approached McDonald’s management, they discovered that the suspect had been working every time the card was used there.
Smith has said the suspect would first swipe a victim’s card to pay for the McDonald’s transaction at the drive-thru, then would secretly swipe the card on his own skimming device to steal the credit card number.
Graham said Monday that the young man used the stolen credit card numbers to purchase gift cards at stores including Walmart and Toys R Us. He then used the gift cards to purchase thousands of dollars of items, which he would then sell on Craigslist and eBay.
Most of the fraudulently purchased items were iPads, computers, video game systems and expensive digital cameras, Graham said.
The investigation into whether any additional suspects helped the young man in his thefts is ongoing, and it’s possible there could be more arrests, Graham said.
Graham said it’s possible that the dollar amount that the boy spent on stolen credit cards was much higher than $13,000, but the big banks in the area that might have been victimized by the credit card thefts did not cooperate by sharing their financial information with prosecutors. Only the local credit unions cooperated, he said. Graham said the losses to the big banks were likely so small that they simply wrote them off instead of pursuing prosecution.
“That’s the frustrating part of this case for me,” he said.
Thomas also imposed 12 months’ probation as part of the teen’s sentence, and 48 hours of community service.
Jeremy Pawloski: 360-754-5465
jpawloski@theolympian.com
JOIN THE DISCUSSION | Register here
We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules. A thorough explanation of rules of conduct can be found in our Terms of Service. If you have any questions, including why your comment may not be showing immediately after you submit it, be sure to visit the commenting FAQ.