Woman pleads guilty on fraud, theft counts

A Utah woman charged with 43 counts of bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud and mail fraud accepted a plea deal Tuesday in federal court.

Lori Lloyd Encinias appeared in U.S. District Court to plead guilty to two counts of access device fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft.

A federal grand jury indicted Encinias last September, accusing her of using stolen Social Security numbers to open at least three bank accounts and take out several credit cards.

According to a statement in advance of a guilty plea, Encinias admitted to taking out an Overstock.com Visa card over the Internet using a stolen Social Security number and made charges totaling $5,300 over a one-month period. She also admitted to using another stolen number to take out a CitiBank Visa card over the Internet to run up $4,900 in charges from December 2005 to August 2006.

Sentencing has been scheduled for March 3, 2008. She faces a maximum mandatory two years in federal prison for each identity theft count and up to 15 years for access device fraud.