A southern Illinois district judge has sentenced a Georgia man to almost six years in federal prison for a scheme in central and southern Illinois.
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Illinois says 31-year-old Traveon Reese of Atlanta admitted to leading a check cashing conspiracy that involved stealing the identities and checks belonging to local business owners and defrauding financial institutions. Reese will serve the 70-month federal prison term following a 20-year term on similar state charges in Iowa.
According to court documents, the conspiracy occurred on several occasions in southern Illinois from March through May 2023. Conspirators stole business checks from the mail, copied the account information and printed fraudulent checks using forged signatures of the local business owners.
They then recruited individuals, often from local homeless shelters or bus terminals, to cash the fraudulent checks on their behalf for an intended loss of at least $93,000 dollars. The actual loss suffered by the financial institutions was estimated to be about half that.
The conspiracy targeted financial institutions across central and southern Illinois including Marion, Royalton, Olney, Effingham, Oblong and Waterloo.
Three other Georgia residents involved in the conspiracy have already been sentenced to three or more years in prison. A fourth will be sentenced next month.
