Chilean woman pleads guilty in fraud scheme with ties to metro-east stores
One of two women from Chile has pleaded guilty for her role in a scheme to buy goods with credit cards stolen from shoppers in metro-east stores and elsewhere the United States. She also has agreed to pay about $81,000 in restitution.
Mayorie Fernandez-Ormeno, 37, admitted that she and her co-defendant, Viviana Ester Orellana, would target distracted shoppers in the scheme. One suspect would “act as a lookout and the other defendant would steal credit cards out of purses and bags of shoppers while the shoppers were not looking,” according to federal court records.
Fernandez-Ormeno was arrested earlier this year on charges of fraud, aggravated identity theft and illegal re-entry after deportation and last week she pleaded guilty in federal court in East St. Louis. Orellana remains at large.
Court records show the two women would immediately use the stolen cards to make purchases in other stores.
Fernandez-Ormeno’s arrest was publicized in April in a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release that included information about nine who have been charged with immigration-related offenses in southern Illinois. The arrests are part of the Trump administration’s priority to enforce immigration laws, U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft of the Southern District of Illinois said in the news release.
With Fernandez-Ormeno’s guilty plea, all but one of the nine persons cited in the news release have already pleaded guilty. The ninth person is scheduled to plead guilty on Wednesday.
Credit card theft scheme
Fernandez-Ormeno pleaded guilty to five charges: conspiracy to commit access device fraud, access device fraud, attempted access device fraud, aggravated identity theft and illegal re-entry after deportation.
She previously had been deported in October 2023.
Sentencing guidelines call for Fernandez-Ormeno to face a prison sentence of 15 to 21 months on her fraud and immigration charges. Fernandez-Ormeno and the government agree a mandatory sentence of two years on her aggravated identity theft charge must be served consecutively to her sentence on the other charges.
U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn told Fernandez-Ormeno during her guilty plea hearing Thursday that he has the final say on the length of her sentence. Fernandez-Ormeno is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 5 before McGlynn.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Ethan Skaggs represented Fernandez-Ormeno and he declined to comment on the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Howard, who prosecuted the case, also declined to comment.
Fernandez-Ormeno and her co-defendant took two credit cards out of the purse of a grocery store shopper in Edwardsville on Feb. 18, 2024, according to a stipulation of facts signed by Fernandez-Ormeno. On that same day, they used one of the credit cards to make purchases of about $2,700 at a store in Glen Carbon while the attempted purchase with the other card “did not go through”
“Ormeno and her co-defendant repeated this same scheme on multiple occasions throughout the United States and took great measures to conceal their identities during this time,” according to the stipulation of facts.
Other tenets laid out in Fernandez-Ormeno’s guilty plea agreement include:
- Agrees to pay $80,868 in restitution.
- Gets a dismissal of one count of aggravated identity theft.
- Acknowledges that she pleaded guilty even though the conviction could result in her “automatic removal from the United States.”
