Cairns police charge woman over alleged credit card fraud

A Cairns woman has been slapped with almost 200 charges after an alleged fraud and property offence spree spanning two years.

A CAIRNS woman has been slapped with almost 200 separate charges after an alleged fraud and property offence spree spanning two years.

Edmonton police previously laid 142 charges against the 44-year-old woman in relation to alleged crimes including theft of mail, possessing and receiving tainted property, forgery, counterfeit currency offences, and fraud offences including alleged pawnbroking of stolen goods, use of stolen credit cards and fuel cards and the falsified creation and utilisation of business accounts.

Now police have issued 50 more charges against the woman.

The woman is due to face court on November 1.

The two-year investigation, which ran from August 2019 and August 2021, involved police from the Cairns and Edmonton Criminal Investigation Branches as well as uniformed officers.

Multiple search warrants were executed at addresses in Cairns and Townsville.

Police will allege they located significant quantities of identifying documents belonging to other people during the searches in the form of driver’s licences, credit cards, Medicare cards and other data and documents.

It will be further alleged that between August 2019 and September 2021 the identification documents were used to create false accounts, such as bank and telephone accounts and lines of credit.

Detectives issued a notice to appear to the woman on Sunday in relation to 50 offences, including 25 counts of fraud, 14 counts of obtaining or dealing with identification information, three counts each of forgery and uttering and two of impersonation.

She is due to appear in the Cairns Magistrates Court on November 1.

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Originally published as Cairns police charge woman over alleged credit card fraud