'I'm nobody's fool.' Felony Lane Gang member gets prison for crime spree ending in NKY

COVINGTON, Ky. – A member of the Felony Lane Gang will spend more than three years in prison for serving as the face of a multistate crime spree that ended at a bank in Northern Kentucky.

John Sapienza, 60, was sentenced on Tuesday in federal court in Covington to 38 months in prison. Sapienza pleaded guilty in November to attempted bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Sapienza was a central player in the identity theft and bank fraud spree, prosecutors said, adding he posed as a bank account holder using counterfeit identification to deceive tellers into processing fraudulent withdrawals.

He is one of six people arrested in connection with the scheme, which ended when police confronted Sapienza outside the WesBanco branch in Fort Thomas.

Sapienza tried to use a fake driver’s license to withdraw money from a customer’s account after he had just come from the bank’s Newport branch where a teller denied his withdrawal, prosecutors said in court filings.

After losing his commercial driver’s license in 2019 and hitting tough times when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Sapienza resorted to financial crimes, said Jeffrey Fichner, his attorney.

While Sapienza was tasked with going inside the bank, Fichner said, he didn’t know where the forged IDs came from or how they were made.

“He’s not the brains of the operation,” Fichner added.

However, Sapienza actively participated in a scheme and chose not to cooperate with authorities against anyone else involved, prosecutors said.

“I’m nobody’s fool. I made a mistake,” Sapienza told U.S. District Judge David Bunning on Tuesday. “I was just trying to survive,” he added.

Tyshawn Wilson, 29, was also federally charged and sentenced to 44 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges in November. Prosecutors say Wilson assisted in the scheme by driving Sapienza to and from various banks in multiple states.

The other four members were convicted last year of attempted theft charges in Campbell County Circuit Court and sentenced to jail time. Those men are Welbyn Reyes, 28; Justin Huerfano, 25; Ahmed Evans, 30; and Daniel Cruz, 27.

Most of the group hails from the Bronx borough of New York City, including Sapienza.

They were all part of the crime spree spanning from New York to Kentucky in which “thousands of dollars were stolen from unsuspecting victims’ bank accounts,” prosecutors in Campbell County wrote in court filings.

During the arrest, authorities recovered more than $25,000 in cash, withdrawal slips bearing a victim's name, as well as forged IDs and bank cards.

The men traveled in two rental vehicles, which investigators traced back to New York using GPS data, prosecutors said. They went through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia before reaching Kentucky.

What is the Felony Lane Gang?

This was not the first time police suspected the gang of committing crimes in Fort Thomas. In 2018, police there connected two different crimes to the gang.

The Felony Lane Gang has been operating since at least 2012 and is implicated in thefts nationwide.

Travis Russ, believed at the time to be the leader of the group based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison in 2014. But the thefts continued.

In October, Springboro police said two people believed to be part of the gang were arrested following a police pursuit that ended in a crash. In 2016, six men whom police identified as part of the gang were indicted on 384 felony charges in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court.

"Decentralized crews often operate independently," the FBI states. "The group utilizes rental vehicles with heavily tinted windows to conduct surveillance in parking lots and steal identification documents (IDs), credit cards and checkbooks from unattended vehicles."

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Felony Lane Gang member gets prison for crime spree ending in NKY