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Rebecca S. Green | The Journal Gazette
Erin Clowser had been out of prison for only about six months.
But it was long enough to run another fraud, this time by using another woman’s credit card.
Clowser, 30, of the 700 block of Columbia Avenue, was sentenced Tuesday in Allen Superior Court to four years in prison for corrupt business influence, a Class C felony.
She must also serve the rest of her sentence in two additional cases, one for forgery and one for corrupt business influence cases, from 2010, for which she was on parole. The two years remaining in those cases will be served at the same time but before she serves the sentence in the new case, according to court documents
Clowser must also repay $1,326 in restitution, according to court documents.
In 2010, Clowser was sentenced to prison for using another person’s credit card to buy tanning sessions, a video game system and other items. She also used customer credit card information obtained through her work – at what was then Centennial Wireless’ customer care center – to make fraudulent credit card charges.
Clowser has a number of other fraud and forgery cases dating to 2002, according to court records.
In her most recent case, she was working for a local automobile dealer, placed there by the non-profit organization Blue Jacket, which provides job training and placement for criminal offenders.
When a customer brought her car in for service, Clowser took the woman’s credit card information, including the three-digit security code.
Clowser then used the information to buy items for her boyfriend, including TinCaps season tickets, as well as sweatshirts and clothing from a brewery.
Clowser also used the information to pay a number of bills, including gas, electric and phone, according to court papers.
She used the same card to put nearly $150 into the prison commissary account of Kenesha Bryant, a burglar from Elkhart whom Clowser hung out with during her time in the Indiana Department of Correction. Clowser has “Kenesha” tattooed on her left wrist, according to court documents.
Tony Hudson, executive director of Blue Jacket, said the organization was heartbroken by Clowser’s decision to return to crime.
He said the organization puts those who seek job placement through a vigorous four-week training program before they place offenders with businesses within the community.
“We have been able to weed out people who are not as serious about earning their second chance as others,” Hudson said. “You can never assess someone’s future intentions to do right or wrong. We have thousands of success stories and then there’s this one.”
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