Kern County Woman Pleads Guilty to 6-Year, $825,000 Credit Card Fraud Scheme

FRESNO, Calif. — Karina Arceo, 34, of Wasco, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for her role in a long-running credit card fraud scheme, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.

According to court records, from February 2016 through August 2022, Arceo and her partner and co-defendant, Miguel Leyva, stole the personally identifiable information (PII) for over 125 victims. They stole much of the PII from patient files at health care providers in Kern County where Arceo worked. Leyva previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years and five months in prison.

Arceo and Leyva used the stolen PII to open thousands of fraudulent credit cards in the victims’ identities. They used false identification documents to open the credit cards and provided billing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses over which they had control so that any communications related to the credit cards would go to them instead of the victims. They then made hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent purchases on the credit cards in Kern County and elsewhere. The fraudulent purchases included home appliances, automobile accessories, designer clothing, tickets to concerts and sporting events, and travel, among other items.

Arceo and Leyva often resold the items that they fraudulently purchased for cash and reaped a windfall because they did not actually pay for the items. They also used checks that had been stolen from companies in Kern County to access the companies’ bank accounts and make fraudulent payments towards the credit cards so as to keep their scheme going. Altogether, their scheme caused a total actual loss of more than $825,000.

This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Barton and Arelis Clemente are prosecuting the case.

Arceo is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 6, 2024. She faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and $250,000 fine for the conspiracy charge, and a mandatory two years in prison, consecutive to other counts, for the identity theft charge. Any sentence, however, would be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of the applicable statutory factors and Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.