A 23-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to access device fraud and aggravated identity theft after she was busted by cops at Minneapolis–Saint Paul Airport for setting up a black-market travel agency using stolen credit card information she bought off the dark web.
Reginae Calhoun of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, faces a potential maximum sentence of up to 10 years in federal jail, along with a $250,000 fine and years of supervised release after she reached a plea deal with prosecutors.
Calhoun could also be required to pay her victims thousands of dollars in restitution following her guilty plea earlier this week in a Minnesota courtroom.
According to court documents, from at least April 7, 2024, Calhoun went into business as a black market travel agent, selling hotel stays and car rentals at discounted prices to customers who probably should have known that something suspicious was going on.
Calhoun managed to set her prices at a “fraction” of what they should have been because she was paying for the hotel rooms and car rentals with stolen credit card details that she had illegally bought off a marketplace on the dark web known as Brian’s Club.
“Calhoun’s customers paid her a fraction of the actual booking costs through peer-to-peer payment applications or in cash.”
U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota
She managed to get away with this crime for several months, but in June 2024, Calhoun attempted to buy some airplane tickets for herself using credit details she had bought from Brian’s Club.
When the first credit card didn’t work, she continued cycling through different card details until the purchase was successful. Little did Calhoun know that the airline had already become suspicious about the attempted purchase and had flagged the transaction as suspicious.
The suspicious activity was reported to the MSP Airport Police Department, and it didn’t take long for law enforcement to contact the real owners of the credit cards and establish that Calhoun had no right to be using their payment information.
“The ingenuity of Minnesota’s fraudsters seems to know no bounds,” Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick commented after Calhoun’s guilty plea.
Calhoun stole hundreds of victim identities and used them to conduct a black-market travel agent fraud scheme—stealing from others to enrich herself,” Kirkpatrick continued. “She will now be held accountable in federal court.”
FBI investigators who assisted the airport police department say that Calhoun amassed stolen credit information belonging to more than 200 victims. Most of the details were still stored on her cell phone when police arrested her.
Calhoun remains on bail pending her sentencing hearing.
