For a mere $220, the 20-year-old waitress allegedly agreed to slide the credit cards of unsuspecting diners through a skimming device that recorded the card data.
In the span of a month, Jaleesa Jimerson allegedly repeated this act between 40 and 50 times at Bubba Gump Seafood Company until the law caught on. And when it did, the law came down hard.
Jimerson, dressed in orange jail garb, stood up when the judge announced her name in a recent court appearance.
One hundred and eight counts, each, for unlawful possession of fraudulent documents for identification purposes and for violating the anti-skimming act, which prohibits stealing electronic information from credit cards. A handful of onlookers, even a few in handcuffs, arched their eyebrows and let out long sighs.
Judge Gerard Hansen, a veteran magistrate judge in Orleans Parish Criminal Court, paged through the court filing and had to repeat himself again. One hundred and eight counts of each charge. He shook his head. The charging documents took up 11 1/2 pages, he noted.
Jimerson has never been arrested before.
The case against her, according to court filings, originated in November outside New Orleans, when a State Police investigator met with a Kenner police detective who was looking into numerous complaints of credit card fraud, according to an arrest warrant filed in court.
The victims all told Trooper Chad LaCoste and Detective David Stromeyer that they recalled using their cards at Bubba Gump Seafood Company in the 400 block of Decatur Street in the French Quarter.
The investigators confronted the restaurant manager and Jimerson in mid-November. Jimerson ran from the room, saying she "forgot to turn off the water in the bathroom, " the warrant states. She returned a minute later.
When investigators checked the bathroom, they found a credit card skimming device beneath the sink.
That's when Jimerson's problems started compounding.
She said in a taped statement that a man and woman had approached her a month earlier, gave her the skimming device and asked her to scan credit cards at random when customers paid for their meals, the warrant states. She allegedly went along with it. Twice, the man and woman came to pick up the device. Twice, they returned it within days, the warrant states, awaiting more data.
Warrants have been issued for the arrest of those two suspects, authorities said.
For her work, Jimerson, of New Orleans, received $220 from the pair.
She was picked up at her home Thursday night, booked into Orleans Parish jail and was in court Friday morning. She was sitting near a suspected gunman, a police officer accused of kidnapping and sexual battery, among other crimes, and a man who has been arrested about a dozen times in dope-dealing cases. As a matter of law, their bonds all ended up significantly smaller than hers.
While the judge gave thought to her predicament, Jimerson stood silent. Hansen grimaced.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry. Even if I was being generous, the number of charges against you . . ." he said, his voice trailing off.
He finally ordered her held in lieu of $5,000 bond on each count. Hansen, with the assistance of court employees, tried adding the total up aloud, but stopped halfway through.
It seemed to require a calculator.
Jimerson sat back down and Hansen called the next case.
Eventually, someone did the math. Jimerson's court record later read: total bond, $1,080,000.
