A man from Texas was sentenced to 58 months in prison for stealing over 1,200 credit and debit card numbers.
Odis Edwards, 40, used financial data obtained from the dark web to book hotel rooms around the Dallas area.
Hotel staff first reached out to police after observing suspicious behavior from Edwards and his co-conspirators.
More than $250,000 was spent for booking the rooms, some of which were sub-rented to pimps and drug dealers at a fraction of the original cost.
The Police Raid
Hotel staff noticed notified police that several large service bills were piling up, all charged to Edwards’ account.
Police then raided the booked rooms, where they found notebooks with what appeared to be numbers from credit cards, altered credit cards and URLs of credit card generators.
The raid resulted in Edwards’ arrest. In January 2019, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit access device fraud.
Edwards was sentenced to 58 months in federal prison last month.
In a press statement, Northern District of Texas U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox applauded the hotel workers who took initiative to involve law enforcement, as well as the police partners and the Secret Service.