morning everybody anybody's not ready we're going to go and begin and we're here this morning to announce arrested a significant racketeering organization that operated here in Pinellas County that was led by Shane Adams as I begin to go through what happened synopsize the investigation for you we're here today as a result of a lot of hard work by detectives within our economic crimes unit great cooperation from Lowe's and from home depot and by members of the Pinellas Pasco State Attorney's Office to put together a very complex case that took a lot of time and a lot of effort a lot of work so it's their credit that we're here today and able to announce these charges and as you'll see probably one of the more significant things about this case about this investigation is it involved some serious exploitation of elderly people and that Adams had absolutely no regard at all a total disregard for these people in their 70s and their 80s and in many cases is often described to you they described that they were terrorized by him and forced to give their credit card numbers so that he could engage in this fraudulent and activity and these thefts with an extensive amount of money over a pretty significant period of time of a few years so i'll go ahead and synopsize for this for you as to what happened in 2012 the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office received some information from Home Depot that stolen credit cards were being used to buy expensive power tools at various home depot stores throughout Pinellas County the suspects were ordering these tools by phone using a credit card and picking up the items at the stores the individuals would then return those items that were ordered with a credit card and it was a stolen credit card number that was being used and returned them to the stores and received cash and or gift cards when they got gift cards they would then be sold at various pawn shops for about 50 cents on the dollar the group used the number of different individuals runners people who are involved and what I'm talking about here is what's laid out in phase one of the investigation and there were different people who went to the stores to pick the items up and different people who would then go in and get the gift cards or the cash in exchange in 2012 Home Depot changed its return policy because of situations like this that were occurring and to combat this type of fraud and limiting the refunds to five hundred dollars in requiring positive identification from people when they wanted to commit and do these exchanges and refunds so that through a little bit of a wrench into it for the organization but nonetheless they still were able to adapt and continue there were about seven people at this time back in 2012 that investigators learned and determined who were involved in this whole scheme to defraud led by Shane Adams at the same time his Adams was doing this he engaged in a business of selling magazines especially to elderly people and what he would do and this is how he exploited these elderly people is the youth contact with them and as you can see here we've identified at least and there's a lot more unfortunately but 19 victims who are all in their 60s to mid 80s and he'd have contact with these people and literally harass them berate them to the point where they just gave him their credit card numbers and when he took their credit card numbers he would then use those as I described to you to order these various items from Lowe's and Home Depot and this first phase of this was primarily Home Depot that he was doing this but he was using these elderly people's credit card numbers because I said a lot of them felt terrorized by him in this first phase we know that the amount well exceeded 75 thousand dollars of transactions and that's just what was able to be established unfortunately there's a lot more than that but the first phase they were able to show 75 thousand dollars worth of fraudulent transactions Adams went to jail actually the prison in February of 2013 on unrelated drug charges and he was released in July of 2013 upon his release from prison Adams recruited others including these people who are now listed here in Phase two and it includes east and laney McKenney Wallace mccaslin and Moreland to participate in this racketeering organization and this fraudulent activity but they changed what they were doing they also now targeted not only home depot but woes as well and because of these property policy returned changes they change what they were doing and they began instead of buying the high-end power tools they were using back here in phase one they largely now began buying appliances and they came up with this concocted story that they would tell contractors primarily here in Pinellas County it would tell these contractors and Adams would tell these contractors that he had a business partner and they had a line of credit within the business the business was getting ready to go under you know and because he's a fine upstanding businessman and a real secure pills guy yeah he wasn't he told these people that he was going to max out the credit line and then declare bankruptcy so that's the kind of the scam that he was given these people said they would buy these high-end appliances that he was getting from Home Depot and Lowe's on these old people's credit cards so that and they would be okay with buying it for 60 cents on the dollar so you got a lot of contractors they knew that they're probably doing something wrong but they didn't know that it was anything other than his effort to rack up this credit and then declare bankruptcy the contractors weren't aware that the real scam was to exploit these elderly people be intimidated intimidate them into give them credit card numbers or to the appliances and that's and stealing from Home Depot and Lowe's and then so for 67 on the dollar detectives were able to conduct various surveillances throughout Pinellas County and observe several members of the organization as they made these purchases and then deliver the items to the contractors it became obvious that the criminal activity needed to stop even as investigators were in the process of putting all this together because again it's very complex case a lot of work needed to be done in coordination with the State Attorney's Office so Adams was originally arrested on a scheme to defraud charge and most recently though on September 21st of 2015 he was charged with the first-degree felony of racketeering involved in a hundred and four different predicate acts dealing in stolen property grand theft involving a victim over age 65 in criminal use of personal identification these other defendants were arrested this week one as recently as yesterday a couple of them already in custody and the additional charges will be added during the second phase of the operation the organization is known and documented to be responsible for about ninety eight thousand dollars in fraudulent transactions and there are about a hundred and fifty separate documented incidents totally a hundred and seventy four thousand dollars between phase one and Phase two but because this organization operated we know for over three years we believe that the total amount involved exceeded well over eight hundred thousand dollars in fraudulent transactions over that period of time there were 19 of these elderly victims as I mentioned to you earlier ranging in age from 65 to 89 years old one of the things we want to reiterate to the public is to be very careful when you are contacted by people who are specially asking for your credit card numbers and when somebody's pressuring and pushing into the point where you feel exploited you probably are being exploited and to call law enforcement to report it and don't communicate with these people because Adams success was because he was a bully and because he was able to get these cred card numbers from these elderly people without that he wouldn't have been able to effect this scheme the scam only worked because he had these legitimate credit card numbers and then was able to use them at Home Depot and Lowe's and then concoct his story in the latter part with the contractors so yet it is a lot of work people put a lot of time and effort within the State Attorney's Office within our economic crimes unit to put all this together it's now into the prosecution phase but we're confident that it's a very solid case and that our detectives and the assistant State Attorney have been successful and able to dismantle a pretty significant criminal organization that was exploiting elderly people with in Pinellas County so with that