Virginia woman gets 12 years for $31M fake coupon scheme
Beethoven had music. Picasso had painting. Lori Ann Talens’ genius manifested itself in a more peculiar way.
“Talens perfected the art of counterfeiting coupons,” federal prosecutor Joseph Kosky wrote in court documents. “Her skill was such that the coupons she created were virtually indistinguishable from genuine (ones).”
Talens’ tools were glossy paper, corporate logos and a computer she used to stitch together disparate text, pictures and bar codes to make what are known as “Frankenstein” counterfeits, all while keeping track of everything on a spreadsheet. Over a little more than three years, federal investigators said Talens, 41, and her husband, Pacifico, cheated manufacturers and merchants of more than $31 million by producing bogus coupons that gave customers merchandise at steep discounts — or for free.
But they weren’t quite good enough. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced Lori Ann Talens to 12 years in prison for running what prosecutors called one of the largest coupon scams in history after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to multiple counts of fraud.
The Talenses made nearly $400,000 selling the fakes to more than 2,000 customers across the country. About 100 companies — including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Ziploc — were their victims. The hardest hit was Kimberly-Clark, the paper products company, which lost nearly $9 million.
“The scale of the (Talenses’) counterfeit coupon scheme was truly massive,” Kosky wrote.
Pacifico Talens Jr., 43, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced last month to more than seven years in prison for helping his wife.
Lawyers representing the couple did not respond to emails sent Thursday night from the Washington Post. But ahead of sentencing, Lori Ann Talens’ attorney, Lawrence Woodward Jr., wrote in court documents that she should get a lighter sentence because she gave federal authorities valuable information about “the rather murky world of counterfeit couponing.” In hourslong interviews, he said, Talens detailed methods and identified other counterfeiters.
To run her “counterfeit coupon empire,” prosecutors say Talens used social media and cellphone apps such as Facebook and Telegram to find groups of coupon enthusiasts and sell them fakes. She even created such a group, ostensibly for people interested in legitimate couponing. But Talens used it as a way to recruit people willing to participate in her black-market operation.
To fill orders, Talens used her computer to design and produce a variety of forgeries from her home, then mailed the fake coupons across the country. She accepted various forms of online payment, including bitcoin and PayPal. In most cases, the coupons offered deals equal to, or even greater than, the value of the merchandise, allowing the shopper to get the item for free. In cases where the discount exceeded the price of an item, retailers had to pay the customer for “purchasing” it.
Talens’ operation started to unravel when one of her customers reported the fakes to the Coupon Information Corp. The association worked with the informant to acquire some of Talens’ counterfeits, confirmed they were fakes when they arrived and hailed the U.S. Postal Service to investigate.