Three DeKalb County women remain at large after a second metro area city issued warrants for their arrest in a massive WIC forgery scam.
Tracy Dupree, 31, and Jamila Scott, 32, of Lithonia, and Ericka Norman, 39, of Decatur, are wanted for allegedly creating phony USDA Women, Infant and Children vouchers. The woman would sell the bogus vouchers or use them to buy baby formula, milk and other infant products from area grocery stores and then sell the products, authorities said.
Lilburn had already issued arrest warrants for the three women in connection with more than $60,000 in items they allegedly obtained from Kroger, Publix and Target stores in Cherokee, DeKalb, Rockdale, Cobb and Fulton counties, authorities said.
The counterfeits were created on official WIC paper, police said.
Late last week, police from Conyers filed arrest warrants for Norman and Dupree, who were caught on camera using fraudulent vouchers at a Kroger in the 1700 block of Ga. 138.
“All the WIC vouchers had the same serial number,” said Conyers police investigator Lt. Jack Dunn. “That’s how the scam was discovered.”
On two different dates in March, the two women tried to pass off four different vouchers, each worth $74, but with the same marking.
In Lilburn, the women were able to get roughly $2,500 worth of goods.
The state Department of Public Health administers the federal WIC program in Georgia. Department spokesman Ryan Deal blames some of the fraud on the department’s lapse in technological acumen.
“Over the last several years, the technology being employed by the program has simply been outpaced by other modes,” Deal said. “But we’re catching up to technology being used to commit these kinds of fraud.”
The women are facing forgery charges.
Norman, according to court records, already has a history of forgery convictions in DeKalb County.
The women were questioned by an inspector general from the USDA in March, but weren’t charged at the time.
Sheriff’s deputies from Gwinnett and Rockdale counties have been assigned the warrants to arrest the women. It is unclear if other warrants exist.
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