Probation Meted Out In Fraud Case

Sat., June 8, 1996

By Adam Lynn adaml@spokesman.com

A Spokane man with recent financial trouble was sentenced to three years probation Friday after pleading guilty to federal charges of credit card, bank and computer fraud.

U.S. District Judge W. Fremming Nielsen also ordered Douglas Dean Scyphers to pay nearly $5,000 in restitution.

Federal prosecutors said Scyphers and Roy Leary McCafferty, formerly of Spokane, devised a scheme to obtain charge cards and loans by creating credit histories for people who didn’t exist.

McCafferty, formerly an employee at the Spokane office of the Credit Bureau Service, used his access to the service’s computers to create the histories, prosecutors said.

He and Scyphers then applied for charge cards and lines of credit under the false names.

Assistant federal prosecutor Thomas O. Rice said Scyphers racked up nearly $20,000 in illegal charges and loans between November 1992 and August 1993.

A Secret Service investigation uncovered the scam recently, and Scyphers was charged this past March.

McCafferty, who moved to Las Vegas recently, was arrested there Thursday and is expected to be charged in the scheme soon.

Scyphers filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court records.

In January, he asked the court to protect him from nearly 70 creditors. The salesman and father of two had accrued more than $56,000 in debt, according to the records.

Scyphers reportedly owed $4,000 on his AT&T Universal card, $2,449 to Fred Meyer and $541 to Ideal Beginnings, a dating service, among others.

A judge discharged the debt last month, the records indicate.

Scyphers also sought bankruptcy protection in 1989. Those records were not available for review.

, DataTimes

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