Chartanae Ajanee Lovely has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for her role in a fraud scheme involving gift cards bought with stolen bank-account information. U.S. District Judge Keli M. Neary imposed the sentence on September 22, according to a September 24 announcement from federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania. [S01]
Lovely also received three years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment. Prosecutors said she and two co-defendants were required to pay restitution, but the release did not disclose the amounts.
Three court outcomes, with gift-card losses still unquantified
Post-prison supervision ordered in the three cases
The official September 24 announcement records supervised-release periods following the defendants’ separate prison terms.
years
Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
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These are supervision orders, not prison terms, loss amounts or time already served. Sentencing dates were August 26, September 1 and September 22, respectively.
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| Category | Supervised release after prison |
|---|---|
| Laje Elise Ford | 2 years |
| Davida Algie Fortenberry | 3 years |
| Chartanae Ajanee Lovely | 3 years |
The chart concerns supervision after custody. Ford’s six-month prison term, Fortenberry’s one year and one day, and Lovely’s eighteen months remain distinct sentences. The extra day in Fortenberry’s term has not been rounded into an invented whole-month comparison.
The three women pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Investigators caught them in 2021 after purchases at Giant Food Stores using stolen bank-account information, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
The release describes trips from California to Pennsylvania and purchases of thousands of dollars in gift cards at multiple stores. Investigators subsequently linked the defendants to similar conduct at retailers elsewhere in the country. No complete loss figure or list of gift-card brands was provided.
The gift-card connection is the conversion of stolen account access into retail stored value. The announcement does not say that Giant, a gift-card issuer or a redemption platform suffered a data breach.
The same release recaps two earlier sentences: Laje Elise Ford received six months in prison on August 26, while Davida Algie Fortenberry received one year and one day on September 1. Those outcomes predate Lovely's September 22 sentence and should not be presented as three newly imposed September 24 prison terms. [S01]
The Secret Service and Susquehanna Township Police investigated the case. The new court development is Lovely's sentence; the underlying purchases and investigation began years earlier.
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Daniel Brooks
Daniel Brooks covers payment networks, financial technology, payment security, gift card fraud and PCI DSS for Gift Card News.