The ringleader of a mail-theft ring, which counterfeited checks to generate drug money, was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison.
Sean Jones, 36, pleaded guilty Jan. 19 to violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, according to the Denver District Attorney’s Office. Jones was ordered to serve five years of mandatory parole and pay $78,792 in restitution.
Starting in April 2016, Jones lead a racketeering enterprise to steal mail and steal the identities of victims to defraud them, through forged, altered and counterfeit checks, according to a Denver Grand Jury indictment. The process in known in street parlance as “schwack.”
“The defendants bought, sold, traded and bartered among each other the stolen personal and financial information and checks in exchange for drugs, mostly methamphetamine and heroin, and also bought, sold and traded the drugs among themselves,” according to a DA’s news release.
In April, Jones was sentenced to 10 years in prison on an Arapahoe County conviction for a like crime. His Denver sentence will run consecutively to the Arapahoe County sentence.
Jones and ten others were charged in a 186-count May 2017 indictment after a months-long investigation by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
An alleged co-ringleader, Kathleen Cooke, 48, is scheduled to be arraigned on March 23. Co-defendant Alan Mill, 34, pleaded guilty to felony identity theft in November and was sentenced February 22 to ten years in prison.
Co-defendants have variously pleaded guilty to felony identity theft or forgery and were sentenced to county jail
sentences, community corrections, suspended prison sentences on completion of probation, or deferred judgments concurrent with probation. Varying amounts of restitution were ordered.
Collectively the defendants stole more than $100,000 from more than 400 victims.
