SANTA ANA, Calif. – A man who opened three accounts at Wescom Central CU using phony identities was convicted Friday of committing $2.8 million in fraud by stealing the identities of more than a dozen people and using them to buy a home, try to buy a boat, open lines of credit.
A jury found Gene Anthony Franklin Jr., 34, of Tustin guilty of 46 felony counts, including identity theft, false impersonation, grand theft by false pretense, child abuse, conspiracy, forgery and attempted extortion by threat, according to a new release issued by the county prosecutors.
Franklin’s string of crime started in late 2006 when he used a man’s personal information to buy a $685,000 Huntington Beach home without his consent. In January 2007, he tried to use another man’s identity to buy a $310,000 boat, but was thwarted when police pulled him over and found credit cards and a driver’s license with another man’s name and a financing application.
Two months later, Franklin fraudulently opened three online accounts through Wescom Credit Union under other peoples’ names. Each account, which requires photo identification, was opened on Franklin’s laptop using his photo or the photo of an unknown woman.
Then in April 2007, he was arrested after he visited a tow yard to recover personal items from his repossessed car. Workers and police found at least 10 stolen identities, including identification cards and credit cards in the vehicle.
After he was jailed, Franklin forged three property transfer documents for properties he learned about from his cellmate. He contacted his former girlfriend and convinced her that he would marry her and adopt her son if she helped get him out of jail.
Using one of the properties as collateral, he posted bail and fled to Mexico with the girlfriend, who is still wanted for a variety of white-collar felonies, including forgery and identity theft.
Franklin was caught in Mexico a month after failing to appear for a February 2008 pretrial hearing in his fraud case. A recovery agent from the bail agency brought him back to Orange County.
