BENTON – A district court judge has sentenced a Calumet City man to over 12 years in prison for engaging in a bank fraud scheme using mail stolen from blue collection boxes in Carbondale.
According to court records, 31-one-year-old Isaiah Jordan pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, one count of theft of mail and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Charged co-conspirators, 25-year-old Brian R. Nevils of South Holland and 25-year-old Quentin S. Abrams of Charleston, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one count of mail theft. The federal judge sentenced Abrams to time served in April and sentenced Nevils to 18 months in prison in September.
According to court documents, the defendants used a stolen master key to gain access to mail collection boxes throughout Carbondale. The conspiracy involved altering the payees and amounts of stolen checks, depositing the checks into bank accounts of co-conspirators and then transferring the funds into their own accounts or of their associates.
Nevils, Jordan and Abrams stole and altered more than 100 checks sent by more than 50 individuals through USPS from March through July 2020. The total estimated loss is $396,971.83.
Following imprisonment, Jordan was ordered to serve three years of supervised release. In addition, the Court ordered Jordan to pay $396,971.83 in restitution to the affected banks.
Thirty-one-year-old Demarius L. Flakes of Blue Island was also charged in the indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, three counts of mail theft, six counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is in custody in Cook County on separate charges.
The Carbondale Police Department and the U.S. Postal Service jointly investigated the case.
