Sentence upheld in Walmart gift card scam

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the 10-year prison sentence of a Los Angeles man who had thousands of fraudulent gift cards when he was arrested in Yuba City.

Employees at the Yuba City Walmart called police in October 2006 when Timothy Truong tried to use a fake gift card. Truong fled east on Colusa Avenue in his Cadillac Escalade, hitting two vehicles before colliding with a pickup driven by a 23-year-old Meridian man, who suffered a concussion.

Noting Truong's previous history of manufacturing fake cards, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled the maximum sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell in Sacramento was not excessive.

Damrell was understandably "astounded" by Truong's repeated commission of the same crime despite repeated punishment, the appeals court said in a six-page opinion.

In the Escalade, police found 3,884 fake cards from Walmart and eight other retailers, 4,050 Walmart account numbers and equipment used to make duplicate cards.

Truong, 44, had prior convictions for card fraud in Nevada, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Utah.

Truong stole cards from stores, skimmed information from them, then placed them back in the stores for customers to buy and activate.

"He would then check the accounts online and spend down their balances before the rightful owners could," former U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said when Truong was sentenced in October 2008.

Truong unsuccessfully based his appeal on the contention that Damrell should not have treated gift cards as "access devices" in figuring the sentence.

The cards meet the definition of such devices, the appeals court ruled.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Rob Young at 749-4710 or at ryoung@appealdemocrat.com