Crime & Safety

Concord Woman Convicted of Identity Theft

Generose Yambao was sentenced to eight years in prison after using fraudulent credit card accounts to buy iPads at Walnut Creek Apple store.

A Concord woman was convicted and sentenced to state prison Tuesday in an identity theft case.

Generose Yambao, 32, of Concord, was sentenced to eight years in prison after she pled no contest to 15 counts of identity theft, second-degree burglary, and attempted grand theft.

Under the new state criminal sentencing guidelines, she will serve her sentence in county jail. The eight year sentence is the most severe sentence to date to be served in county prison for an identity thief in Contra Costa County, according to Contra Costa District Attorney Mark Peterson.

In two separate criminal cases, Yambao used the identities of eight victims between July 1, 2011 and November 30, 2011 to create fraudulent credit card accounts and fake checks to steal more than $46,000 worth of merchandise and cash from more than 10 retailers, banks and online services, according to Peterson.

In one incident on Sept. 6, 2011, Yambao walked into the
in Walnut Creek and wrote a fraudulent check for 19 iPads and a MacBook Air worth $19,255. The iPads were never recovered. Yambao was photographed on store security cameras making the purchase.

Another victim suffered through an identity theft victim’s worst nightmare. Within 35 minutes of her purse being stolen from her locked car at Round Valley Regional Park on Nov. 11, 2011, her credit cards were being used at a gas station in Brentwood.

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She immediately cancelled her credit cards and checking accounts and
placed flags on her credit report and filed a police report. Each evening after work, she would return home to find she had dozens of email notifications that credit cards had been opened in her name from Barclays Bank, Kohl’s, American Express, Macys, Discover Card, Pottery Barn, Best Buy, Sears, Web Bank, PayPal and Victoria’s Secret. She would spend the next day contacting the banks and retailers cancelling these fraudulent accounts and then come home again to find more notifications.

Peterson said Yambao transferred $2,500 cash from her bank account to a fraudulent PayPal account and cashed fraudulent checks totaling over $5,000. Fake Gmail accounts and cell phone numbers were set up in victim’s name.

Yambao had a previous 2001 federal conviction for identification fraud and
received a 50-month federal prison sentence. In that case, she stole more than  $137,000.


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