The Free Press
ST. PETER — A woman with addresses listed in Illinois, Kansas and Georgia faces a felony swindling charge after allegedly duping a Nicollet County man in an online scam.
Amber Denise Martins, 29, reportedly of Marietta, Georgia, was charged Thursday in Nicollet County District Court.
A criminal complaint states a man in Nicollet County found a person purportedly selling a precision steering part online in July 2021. The man reported talking to a username on the website, the two agreed on a price, and the man sent $1,700 to the seller through his bank in Lafayette on July 6.
Two days later, the man noticed the seller’s account on the site was deleted. He searched for the same part on the site and found an identical listing under a different username, then reported the account and later saw it had been deleted as well.
After alerting his bank to report a fraudulent sale, the man found out his money had been sent to an account at an affiliate bank in Kansas City, Missouri. A fraud risk manager at the Missouri bank learned the account holder was a woman named Amber Denise Martins in Freeport, Illinois.
About $10,000 in payments had been transferred into the account from the same online site, according to the complaint. Some money had been transferred to another bank, while…
