Tulsa, Sand Springs Women Indicted For Identity Theft

NewsOn6.com

Two Oklahoma women have been indicted by Federal Grand Jury in charges of identify theft. Teresa R. Browning, 36, of Tulsa and Betty R. Warden, 45, of Sand Springs, are accused of stealing the personal identify information of a number of people from the U.S. mail and from computerized account records at the employer where they had both worked.

According to Thomas Scott Woodward, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma, the women are said to have used the stolen identities to access their victims' debit and credit accounts. They are also said to have cashed stolen checks to obtain money and merchandise from Tulsa area stores.

"These acts allegedly occurred between August and December 2009," Woodward said. The federal charges were returned by the April Grand Jury.

The return of an indictment is a method of informing the defendant of alleged violations which must be proven in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt to overcome the defendant's presumption of innocence, Woodward notes in a press release.