A East Peoria man was indicted Tuesday on federal wire fraud and identity theft charges after he allegedly used an unlicensed company to steal people’s personal information for his own gain.
Stephen H. Keith, 35, was charged with four counts of wire fraud, one count of illegally obtaining financial information through a computer, three counts of identity theft, two counts of aggravated identity theft and another count of making a false statement for his role in a five-year scheme to defraud customers of a company he founded by stealing their personal information and using it to impersonate them and obtain their money.
According to an affidavit filed with U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, the investigation into Keith began in April 2022, when a woman who worked for him attempted to file some checks at a CEFCU credit union in Morton. The credit union became suspicious and called local police, stating that the woman was trying to file stolen checks.
When police arrived on scene, she told them that the checks weren’t stolen and that Keith gave them to her to cash. She told them that Keith was waiting for her in the parking lot in her car, but her Chevy Equinox was nowhere to be found when police searched the lot.
She called Keith to find out where he was and to tell him that police were questioning her about the checks. During the call, police overheard a man say that the checks weren’t stolen and that he gave them to her, consistent with what she told police initially. While she would report her vehicle stolen, police eventually arrested her on forgery charges.
At Morton police headquarters, she told detectives that she worked for a company called DeviceLyfe, saying that she and Keith would go into people’s houses and do IT work on computers and phones. She said that Keith had thousands of credit card numbers, also saying that he was in possession of a credit card reader and had equipment in her home.
Two days after her arrest, she admitted to cashing forged checks for Keith in exchange for payment. She alleged that Keith wrote the checks, offering to pay her $100 per check if they were cashed. She also admitted to gaining access to her grandmother’s bank account to take money from it, working with Keith to steal money from those accounts.
A search of her vehicle by Morton police turned up numerous checks, credit/debit cards, identification documents and other financial information that belonged to Keith, the woman and other individuals, with at least two victims having property recovered from the vehicle. The search also found four electronic devices, with a search warrant being filed by police in Pekin to obtain the information from the devices. Federal Magistrate Judge Jonathan Hawley gave police permission to search the devices in November 2022.
In April 2023, Keith was arrested on theft, fraud and forgery charges, with two laptops and two thumb drives being seized as part of his arrest. Hawley authorized search warrants for the devices in September 2023, with FBI agents reviewing their contents.
The search of the four devices obtained by Pekin police in 2022 found multiple files that contained usernames and passwords along with credit card information for thousands of people. One file contained emails and passwords for 177,000 people.
Agents also found tools and programs used for hacking and compromising computer systems and computer networks, with one screenshot showing four separate bank accounts with with their balances, while another screenshot showing someone’s W-4 form from 2017, along with their address and Social Security number.
Another device also showed a series of compromised account credentials, with some having not been decrypted yet. They also contained URLs of sites operating on the Tor Network, designed to facilitate anonymous communication over the Internet.
The descriptions of those URLs included some specifically used for hacking websites, including ones like “Rent-a-Hacker,” “Hacker-Cracker Service” and “Hackerplace.”
A review of the laptops and thumb drives showed pictures and video of Keith, along with web browser history showing DeviceLyfe’s website and email addresses, along with personal accounts and email addresses for other websites. FBI agents could not find any record of Keith or his company being registered with the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office.
The computer also had screenshots of a Citi account and a PayPal account being accessed by accounts that were compromised by Keith.
In August 2023, FBI agents interviewed a man who said that he had Keith repair a computer for him. He deemed Keith a “computer genius,” but after Keith repaired his computer while he was away in Africa, his daughter told him that there was some suspicious activity in his bank account.
Someone had been trying to remove money from his bank account, and when he called his bank to try and figure out what was going on, he discovered that the scheme. An address provided for Keith matched where he was living at the time.
The man also told the FBI that someone had tried to remove money from his retirement account at the same time. He was shown a pair of screenshots similar to the ones found on one of the electronic devices in Pekin, saying that he thought that Keith was using his access to the computer to access the bank accounts and W-4 form. He also said that multiple accounts had been created in his name without his knowledge or permission.
Throughout 2023, FBI agents in Springfield would receive records indicating access to the man’s accounts, along with access to Keith’s own accounts, on the same days from the same IP addresses. Agents became convinced that Keith was accessing the man’s account during those times.
In December 2023, a woman was interviewed by the FBI alleging that from March-May 2023, she began to receive phone alerts saying that multiple accounts had been accessed. When she checked her bank account, she noticed that another checking account was created, linked to her charge account, with $100 being transferred from one account to the new account.
At this same time, a new user was added to her account with the name “trustnoone.” Both the transfer and the new account were done without her permission or knowledge. When she called her bank, she confirmed that there were no other authorized users on her account.
She was asked if she knew Keith, with his address having been added to her account in the meantime. She also learned that a new credit card and debit card had been mailed to Keith, as well.
She had also received alerts for unauthorized access. FBI agents reviewed her email account, which showed that Keith had been added as an authorized user of her bank account at one point, with account access logs showing that someone had tried to add a payee and download statements in March 2023.
Eventually, the FBI obtained records showing that Keith had accessed the accounts, along with his own, from the same IP address.
The indictment said Keith would save the information he collected to a Dropbox account even after he had been initially arrested, also saying that he made false statements to the FBI about compromising people’s bank accounts and using their email addresses to access them.
Keith is currently being held in federal custody, with Magistrate Judge Eric Long ruling last week that he needed to be detained as he could have been a flight risk and could have tried to intimidate witnesses or obstruct justice. Long said that there was no condition that could ensure he would appear in court, citing the strength of the evidence against him, the long period of incarceration he was facing and his prior criminal history, along with his violations of probation, failures to appear in court and attempts to evade law enforcement.
If convicted, Keith could face up to 95 years in prison.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: East Peoria man accused of fraud, large identity theft scheme
Reporting by Zach Roth, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
