A woman from the Bronx, New York is heading to prison for about a year-and-a-half after she fraudulently hauled in $200,000 worth of Apple iPhones and was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced on Thursday.

The elaborate scheme of 39-year old Rosanna Lucrecia Cruel Blanco also had New Jersey ties, which included when she and her conspirators would use fake NJ licenses and addresses as part of filing claims.

Attorney Sellinger said that the scheme ran for just over two years in length from December of 2017 to January of 2020, and during that time, Blanco and her conspirators began executing their plan to get replacement cell phones from an insurance company and in doing so, would assume alternate identities of actual wireless customers and then file false claims under the company's handset insurance program, citing damage, theft, or loss.

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Most of what they stole in handsets was Apple iPhones, worth about $700 to $1,000 each, according to Sellinger.

As part of their scheme, Blanco and crew also provided the company with fake ID's identification using a phony New York or New Jersey driver’s license that included the name of the actual customer, and then gave the company shipping contact names and addresses where they wanted the iPhones and accessories to go to, which were not the same as the actual person they were pretending to be.

Among the shipping addresses they submitted to the company, most are in New York in the Bronx, Yonkers, White Plains, Manhattan, but also several undisclosed locations in New Jersey.

The company then shipped out the replacement cell phones through UPS or FedEx to the names and addresses provided and then Blanco and her conspirators, picked them up.

In addition to her time in prison, Blanco has been sentenced to three years of supervised release and must pay restitution and forfeiture of $246,025.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Blake Coppotelli of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.

Defense counsel: John Yauch Esq., Assistant Federal Public Defender, Newark.

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