Woman buys $200k in goods from Costco, Hobby Lobby and more with bad checks, feds say

Bad checks from closed accounts funded a Maryland woman’s shopping trips for almost two years, federal officials say.

Lucy Annette Alexander, of Maryland and Washington, D.C., was recently indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of “bank fraud for using checks in a fraudulent manner,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Officials say Alexander, 35, used more than 200 bad checks for over $200,000 in purchases from at least 20 different stores in Pennsylvania. Those stores included Costco, Hobby Lobby, PetSmart, The Home Depot and Barnes & Noble.

A defense attorney representing Alexander could not be reached for comment by McClatchy News.

Alexander is accused of “passing fraudulent checks” between August 2019 and June 2021. Officials say the JPMorgan Chase bank accounts linked to those checks had already been closed, so funds were not available to cover her purchases.

Authorities also believe she used seven Chase Bank checks for more than $17,000 in purchases at Weis Markets, Giant Food, and Roses Discount Store locations in Pennsylvania in May 2020. She knew her account didn’t have enough money available at the time of writing those checks, officials say.

If convicted of the charges, Alexander faces up to 30 years in prison followed by supervised release.