Crime & Safety

Woman Charged with Using Stolen Credit Card at Burnsville Stores

Latoya Denise Reese-Scott was arrested Thursday on a warrant charging her with credit-card fraud.

A Minneapolis woman has been charged with credit-card fraud after police say she stole debit cards and information from a woman at a St. Paul swim meet and used them to make thousands of dollars in purchases in Burnsville.

Latoya Denise Reese-Scott, 26, faces two counts of credit-card fraud, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Reese-Scott was arrested Thursday on a warrant issued two weeks earlier. She is free on bond and has an omnibus hearing scheduled for Oct. 24 in Dakota County District Court in Hastings.

Find out what's happening in Burnsvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

According to the criminal complaint, Burnsville police began investigating the case in February after the victim reported that she had been notified of suspicious activity on her debit-card account.

The card was used to make multiple purchases at retail stores in Burnsville and elsewhere in the Twin Cities, the complaint says.

Find out what's happening in Burnsvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The victim told police she had a second debit card still in her wallet, but she reviewed her account online and learned that there were multiple unauthorized purchases on that account as well.

The victim believes that her card was stolen while she attended a swim meet at Macalester College in St. Paul. She provided police with documentation of eight unauthorized purchases on her Chase account totaling more than $1,300 and seven unauthorized purchases on her Wells Fargo account totaling more than $1,000, all between Jan. 8-11.

Surveillance video from some of the stores showed the same woman, later identified as Reese-Scott, making the fraudulent purchases, according to the complaint.

Police met in April with a relative of Reese-Scott, who identified her in surveillance photos. The relative told police that Reese-Scott has been stealing from college campuses since she was a teenager and has never been caught, the complaint says.

Reese-Scott’s criminal record includes a conviction for credit-card fraud in Hennepin County in 2006.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.