Before this week, about the only thing they had in common was being “coupon enthusiasts” who purchased coupons from the same source. Now, they have another thing in common – they’re all going to be spending time behind bars for being a little too “enthusiastic” in their efforts to save money.
38-year-old Jennifer Snyder of Lavon, Texas, 41-year-old Melissa Apodaca of Thornton, Colorado, and 31-year-old Amber Teague of Louisville, Kentucky have all been sentenced for purchasing and using hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit coupons.
Snyder has been ordered to serve 15 months in prison and pay $218,517.50 in restitution. Apodaca will serve 18 months and must pay $440,571. And Teague was sentenced to six months imprisonment plus $111,811.74 in restitution. All will also be subject to an additional two years of supervised release.
Their sentencing this week follows that of Cindi Swindle of Jacksonville, Florida, who was sentenced last week to a year in prison and $201,650 in restitution. All four women were convicted of being among the top purchasers of notorious coupon counterfeiter Lori Ann Talens, who herself is serving a 12-year prison sentence for creating and selling some 13,000 counterfeits worth about $31 million.
Swindle was identified as Talens’s fifth largest customer. Snyder was the fourth, spending nearly $5,000 for counterfeit coupons on 120 separate occasions. She attempted to argue that she was less culpable than the others, since “she did not personally use any of the coupons sold by Lori Talens,” instead acting “as a middleman to individuals seeking to buy coupons from Ms. Talens.”
Apodaca was Talens’s third largest customer, spending more than $9,000 for counterfeit coupons on 94 separate occasions. She made the opposite argument, saying she was “less culpable than Snyder, who acted as a middleman in the scheme, passing along orders to Talens, handling payments, and facilitating shipments directly to other purchasers — thereby expanding the reach of the fraud beyond her own purchases.”
Apodaca, in contrast, said she merely “got caught up in the excitement” of couponing and allowed “that feeling to cloud her judgment.” Ultimately, she argued she was just “an end user of the coupons created by the operation’s mastermind,” and unlike Talens and Snyder, was “not one of the organizers.”
The judge rejected both Snyder and Apodaca’s pleas for a reduced sentence of probation or home confinement only, and agreed with the prosecution’s restitution calculations.
Teague, meanwhile, had more success in reducing her punishment, after putting up the most vigorous defense of all of the accused. As Talens’s second-largest customer, she spent more than $12,000 to buy coupons on 155 separate occasions. But while her co-defendants argued that the precise amount of losses suffered by retailers and manufacturers was impossible to calculate, Teague produced detailed records of her purchases. While the prosecution calculated the losses she caused to be $591,636, Teague’s records showed a more conservative total of $111,811.74. The judge accepted this total in determining the restitution she owed, which also had the effect of reducing the sentencing guideline range, thus explaining the shorter six-month sentence she received.
Talens’s largest customer of all, Sherise Williams, is due to be sentenced in February.
In all, prosecutors said Talens sold counterfeit coupons to more than 2,000 customers. They couldn’t go after all of them, so they chose to prosecute the top five purchasers who caused the greatest amount of losses. By doing so, their goal was “sending a message to the community at large that fraud schemes such as these will not be tolerated.” Each defendant “participated in a scheme that caused over $31 million in losses to merchants and manufacturers,” and without significant punishment for the offenders, “such a staggering amount of money is sure to tempt other fraudsters to duplicate this scheme’s success.”
In a statement to Coupons in the News, Coupon Information Corporation Executive Director Bud Miller praised the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for pursuing the case. “As CIC has warned, the knowing use of counterfeit coupons is a crime that can lead to severe consequences, including incarceration,” Miller said. “For this reason, CIC urges consumers not to purchase coupons, as doing so may expose them to counterfeit or stolen offers and potential legal consequences.”
Prosecutors’ hope now is that seeing four out of five – so far – of Talens’s top customers behind bars, will discourage others from seeking out counterfeit coupons for themselves. By holding buyers as well as sellers responsible, the message to future fraudsters is that when it comes to creating and using counterfeit coupons – creating them is only half the crime.
Image source: FBI
