A University doctoral student has been accused of conspiring to steal debit and credit card information from restaurant diners across the Southeastern U.S. and use that information to net himself at least $145,000, according to court documents.

Carlton A. Lewis

In a U.S. District Court indictment filed in Tennessee, Carlton A. Lewis, a graduate assistant and student in the Department of Psychology, is alleged to have worked with two others in an elaborate plot to defraud dozens of people of their credit card information.

According to court documents, Lewis joined forces with Derron Ridley and Shena Everett to use credit card skimming devices to obtain account information from customers and load that data on prepaid reloadable money cards from Walmart. Merchandise and gift cards were purchased with the refurbished Walmart cards, and would often be sold to generate income. The story was first reported by the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Everett worked as a server in a Baton Rouge, La. restaurant, and starting in August 2010 received skimming devices from Lewis for the purpose of stealing credit card info. In March, Ridley sent a skimming machine to Everett, who then passed on the stolen data to Lewis and Ridley.

Lewis is in a Blount County, Tenn. jail pending trial.

“He is an intelligent man who was enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Georgia. There is no dispute that he has no criminal history or that he has the support of his mother, who is a college professor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Bolitho wrote in a memo in support of request for Lewis’ detention pending trial. “None of that, however, changes the existence of strong evidence that Defendant has lived a double life – dedicated honor student by day, identity thief and sophisticated fraudster by night and weekend.”

Bolitho sought the request for detention after discovering Lewis is a citizen of both the U.S. and Canada, and that his mother and father are citizens of Trinidad, where his father still resides. His mother is a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta.

The case came to light in March when Lewis was charged with a DUI by a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper in Knoxville. According to the documents, Lewis was driving a rented Toyota from a Georgia Hertz dealership and an inventory search of the SUV after the arrest revealed 39 fake credit cards, a fake Texas driver’s license, a credit/debit card skimming an re-encoding device, receipts of recently purchase merchandise, dozens of prepaid gift cards and iPads, iPods, digital cameras and expensive athletic shoes.

The trooper called the U.S. Secret Service, and upon investigation it was learned fraudulent transactions were made and Lewis was seen on surveillance footage making the transactions. During the probe, Lewis’ bank records were obtained, which showed $145,000 was deposited into his account between March 2010 and April 2011, with more than $50,000 of that in cash deposits.

“As the facts underlying the charges in this case show, Defendant, in essence, possesses the ability to become whoever he wants, whenever he wants, with access to seemingly endless amount of other people’s money,” Bolitho wrote.

Lewis Indictment from U.S. District Court
Lewis Detention Request from U.S. District Court