Maybe that's how she gets away with it without doing jail time. It's all always cases of petty theft but over time the amounts involved add up.
It does eventually catch up to them.
There was a guy selling vintage guitars on ebay and guitar forums. But, they were guitars he did not own. He would visit shops, take pictures, then make them appear to be his complete with actual photos.
A few thousand dollars later, and months, the buyers got nothing.
Some buyers were buying the exact same guitar on multiple venues but were not aware of the multiple listings.
He ended up buying something off of me. He was running a little scam where he would get a Postal Money Order, fill in the amount etc, but give the actual money order to his girlfriend to cash in. That way he was never out a penny. He would then have the carbon copy and receipt numbers. Those he would fill in and just hang onto. After a while of non payment, you'd send him a reminder. He'd send you a copy of the M.O.. So, I fell for it and sent the merchandise. But, first I wanted to talk to him on the phone. He would not give me his phone number but insisted he call me (it was the least he could do, he said).
Well, he had me convinced that he had been waiting on the merchandise but understood the mix up. So, I shipped him the merchandise (some rare, out of print books on guitars, guitar making, guitar restoration, etc) even though I never got paid.
I started getting contacted by other people (buyers and sellers) who he had scammed wanting to know what address I shipped to (they were all PO Boxes for all of us) in a couple different states. Well, I had a piece of evidence no one else had...his phone number on my caller ID. Turns out he had called me from his parent's home out in Nevada.
One of the buyers who contacted me lived in Arizona, compiled quite a detailed listing of everyone he scammed, and went to the Nevada authorities.
He was eventually caught, sentenced, and serving time in a Nevada prison.
So even the littlest of scams can add up into large sums of money and large quantity of persons being scammed.
---------- Post added at 09:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:56 PM ----------
If you look at some of her arrests, they are dating back to mid and late 1990's.
The article you are quoting is dated fall 2000.
Sorry to say, but after following all the dots, its hard to believe she wasn't running a scam on the author of that newspaper piece.