Posted on September 28th, 2022

Did Houstonian Roekeicha Brisby wave a ‘magic wand’ to lure desperate customers into her credit repair office to pay up to “thousands of dollars” to have Brisby remove nagging debts off their credit reports? These people’s lives would change forever if Brisby could do something quick and beneficial. Brisby’s magic wand was credit washing.

“I can help you,” she told gullible customers. “I can raise your credit score high enough to give you good credit, and you can buy whatever you want,” she assured them. Then, with an ingenious strategy, using copy and paste, and filing bogus police reports, most of the debts owed by Brisby’s clients disappeared into thin air.

Many customers were happy.

So, was Brisby, a professional magician? Did she have the Midas touch, or was something more sinister lurking beneath the surface?

According to law enforcement officers in Houston, Texas, aka HTown, Roekeicha Brisby, 29, was simultaneously clever with paperwork and as sinister as a rattlesnake. However, she wasn’t the snake with the poison but the one with the money game.

After police conducted an investigation into Brisby’s fraudulent credit repair activities, they soon discovered how she filed 133 ‘false identity-theft reports’ on behalf of her clients to pull off a credit score trick. Authorities accused the woman of illegally fixing people’s credit to have debts taken off her client’s credit reports, which, in return, raises a person’s credit score high enough to make expensive purchases or take loans at low-interest rates. Brisby’s crimes caused prominent banks and financial lending institutions to lose at least $3.3 million, Harris County Precinct#4 Constables’ Office said in a July 10th news release.

“She submitted police reports on these folks’ behalf saying that the monies spent were fraud or stolen,” Herman said. “And many of these financial institutions reversed the credit for these people. And it did make their credit scores … better.” Herman further said his investigators were in touch with Houston’s FBI Division and other federal agencies. During the search warrant at Brisby’s office, police saw glossy advertisements for Rose Credit Repair that stated the company used the law to repair credit legally. “Clearly this is not the case as the defendant (Brisby) violated the law in an effort to defraud financial institutions out of a significant amount of money,” Herman pointed out during the press conference.

The reports also contained information about the alleged loss or stolen credit cards belonging to Brisby’s clients to force the removal of $980,000 in debt taken off the credit history of 27 individuals. Brisby’s scheme was executed through her Rose Credit Repair Company, located in Humble, a city in the same Harris County jurisdiction as Houston. Constable Investigators executed a search warrant on July 7th at the company and carted off electronic files, computers, ledgers, videos, and paper files.

Police arrested Brisby two days later, on July 9th. Prosecutors charged Brisby with (1) Fraudulent use of identifying information and (2) Forgery of Government Instruments totalling over $300,000.00. Her case is assigned to the 183rd Criminal District Court. Prior to their arrest on the first two charges, Brisby was already free on bond for injury to a child charge. Police claimed Brisby ran the fraudulent operation from November 2020 until March 2022.

The road to succeed in the criminal world is often paved with a bit of cleverness mixed with carelessness and downright foolishness when a bold Roekeicha Brisby utilised different letterheads and logos belonging to police agencies to create false identity theft reports with fake offence numbers and dates, including a written narrative as if a police officer typed the report to create the appearance of legitimacy. This ingenious plan was to trick credit agencies and lenders into believing her clients’ identities had been stolen when this wasn’t true. Constable Herman confirmed the false police reports appeared to have come from his Precinct#4 Office.

“We don’t know how many more are out there,” Herman told TV reporters.

What Brisby carried out on behalf of her clients is a growing national crime problem known as credit washing. Credit washing kicks into play when a person files a fake identity theft report with a law enforcement agency claiming a stranger stole their identity. The key is to show the debts aren’t yours because the person who stole your identity incurred the debts in your name, which isn’t true. This scheme prevents the consumer from paying off the debts already listed on their credit file. The next step the person or credit repair specialist takes is to submit copies of the identity theft police report to credit bureaus and to the lenders to the consumer who owes money.

If the FTC and credit bureaus accept that a stranger stole your identity and made illegal purchases in your name and the incurred assets that defaulted, the credit bureaus will remove the debts from your credit file. Once this happens, a person’s credit score will shoot up significantly higher, giving the scammer a clean slate with good credit.

Brisby’s crimes may develop into one of the largest ‘credit washing’ cases in History, a scheme that’s been tied to an ongoing multi-billion-dollar credit repair operation in Atlanta, Georgia. As mentioned, the scam helped Brisby’s clients to erase over $3 million in bad debts, thus giving the debtors a clean slate with no record of debts and thereby giving her clients a high credit score that they weren’t supposed to have in the first place. Financial scams that are used to boost credit scores create big losses for banks and creditors. These burgeoning crimes will continue unabated because it appears the finance system is ill-equipped to fix it.

Rose Credit Repair advertised itself as using a legal process to fix credit errors, Precinct#4 Constable Mark Herman said in a news conference recorded by local KHOU Channel 11 TV Station. Click2Houston TV reported the company said it could raise clients’ “credit score by 50-100 points” with results “in 35 days or less.” Herman further explained how Brisby used various illegal tactics, manipulating and faking 133 police reports to get clients’ debts eliminated off their credit.

“There’s no excuse for defrauding anyone, including a lender,” said credit expert John Ulzheimer. Ulzheimer is a nationally recognized expert, who previously worked for FICO and Equifax and credit.com.

“If any credit repair customer knew or should have known their credit repair company is committing fraud on their behalf, then they’re complicit,” Ulzheimer explained in an email to Newsblaze.

An unidentified social media user with law enforcement affiliations named Keo said Brisby’s Rose Credit Repair is connected to a global internet fraud network centralised in Atlanta that includes further ties to West Central Africa. Keo said Brisby is only a small fish subjected to interrogation by federal investigators while held behind bars. Brandon Johnson claimed Roekeicha Brisby ”ran off with $600 of my money after I paid for a (credit) tradeline, then she blocked me.” “She partners with Montavis Merritt out of Atlanta, who is also a scammer.”

It takes a bold person to fabricate police reports. But Ms Brigsby took her crimes to a new level by filing over 133 police reports of false identity theft from one police agency alone! Since Brisby’s crimes were exposed to the light of day, the evidence proves she’s not a magician. Instead, she’s a rip-off artist trying to pocket “tens of thousands of dollars,” or a million or two. Her false police reports were used as “supporting documentation” to assist bad debtors in erasing bad credit.

Although Roekeicha Brisby’s website and Instagram account tied to her Rose Credit Repair Company appear legit, the scheme, as stated, boils down to a crime called “credit washing.” Unfortunately, credit washing is one of the fastest-growing frauds for banks, lending institutions, and credit bureaus. The credit wash scheme grew approximately 400 per cent between 2018 and 2019 alone. The transactions occur when consumers or credit repair companies systematically refute each tradeline of credit listed on a bureau’s file.

At its core, credit washing exploits the identity theft protections passed into law by Congress in 2017, which made identity theft a part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The FCRA assists legitimate victims of identity theft. Unfortunately, under this umbrella, credit repair scammers exploit this loophole to help clients file bogus identity theft reports to the FTC, and the police, to assist customers in disputing debts on their credit history.

The FTC law can force credit bureaus and creditors to remove a debt or debts off someone’s credit file once the person(s) claim they were the victim of identity theft. The game plan is to avoid paying off loans and reap the harvest of a higher credit score once the negative items are removed. Credit repair companies will charge clients from $1000 up to $5000 or more to ‘wash off’ their poor credit.

Whether an identity theft report is true or false, FCRA gives consumers the right to report the identity theft to credit bureaus. The bureaus are obligated under federal law to inform creditors that a person’s identity has been stolen. And the person may not be responsible for the owed debts to lenders. However, once the debt is validated, the person’s credit score rises comfortably. Roekeicha Brisby ran this type of illegal operation. An astute businesswoman with close to 100 thousand followers on Facebook, Brisby solicited customers on her website and social media accounts. She even hung out at various events throughout the city of Houston and its surrounding areas, passing out advertisement flyers.

Keep in mind, that it is against the law to file bogus police reports.

Once an identity theft claim is received and subsequently the person’s identity is verified, credit bureaus will block negative reporting information from entering the person’s credit report within four business days of receiving the claim. Credit lenders are also required to conduct an investigation within 30 days and submit a report to the credit bureau and the consumer. The law tilts in favour of consumers even if they timely filed “fake identity reports,” and if somehow, lenders and credit reporting agencies failed to complete their in-house investigation within the 30-day deadline, the consumers can refile with the FTC to force the credit bureaus and lenders to remove the open debts on their file due to claims of being a victim of identity theft.

John Ulzheimer’s assessment of the credit score game is simple. “There’s a difference between earning solid credit and defrauding your way to solid credit.” For example, Ulzheimer added, “If someone hires a credit repair company and they have FICO scores in the low 500s’ after years of credit mismanagement and in a few months they have FICO scores in the high 700s’, then their credit repair company is either defrauding the credit bureaus, or the consumer has the best luck in history for a 700-plus score to magically appear on their credit report.”

Roekeicha Brisby may have escaped the jailhouse had it not been for the skilful eyes of fraud investigators that worked tirelessly to weld the pieces together. At Ally Financial Institution in Lewisville, Texas, Investigator Jim Potter linked Brisby’s Rose Credit Repair to phoney identity theft claims submitted to Ally by consumers requesting debts be removed from their credit reports. First, Potter keenly observed a suspicious pattern of police reports sent to their office that appeared doctored.

Police reports had mismatched fonts with the same number. The filing of the police reports appeared to have the same officer’s ID. The narratives in the police reports duplicated the same language. Alarmed over the paperwork, the investigators noticed a phone number on the Fax Header. Once the investigators did an online reverse search on the number listed on the Fax Header, they discovered the reports were faxed from Brisby’s Rose Credit Repair. Realising they’d received over 100 police reports with the same doctored police reports, the investigators felt confident they were dealing with a “credit washing” scam. The fraud investigators contacted police in Houston because the reports originated in that city.

Harris County Precinct 4 Deputy-Constable investigator Jessenia J. Barbar conducted the initial follow-up investigation of Roekeicha Brisby’s Rose Credit Repair Company located at 15333 John F. Kennedy Blvd# 850. Barbara wrote the following in an affidavit on March 23, 2022, to obtain felony warrants for Brisby’s arrest. “I was assigned case number#2109-00091 based on a complaint filed by Ally Financial Institution at 2911 Lake Vista Drive in Lewisville, Texas. Fraud investigator Jim Potter reported to Investigator Barbar that from August 2021 until March 2022, Ally Financial obtained fictitiously altered police reports starting with digits 6742, numbers that are combined with other (invalid) numbers.”

Barbar said the typing of the identity theft reports submitted to her agency ‘Constable Precinct#4’ appears different in size with unmatchable fonts. The fonts and typing size were glaringly different from what Precinct#4 would use to generate legitimate reports for complainants. In addition, investigators Barbar and Deputy Cooke interviewed several people whose names were listed in police reports as the victims of identity theft. The identity theft reports were untrue because the entire scheme was set in motion by Rose Credit Repair Owner Roekeicha Brisby to trick financial institutions into discharging the ‘true debts’ of Brisby’s clients who had not been the victims of identity theft.

Each witness mentioned above denied authorising Brisby to file identity theft reports on their behalf and that they only paid her to fix their credit because Brisby appeared as a person with a reputable company. “I never made a police report,” Jodi Ann Mott told investigators. When asked how she met Brisby, the woman said, “I met her at a work convention where she handed out flyers advertising her business. She claimed to be the owner of Rose Credit Repair.” Mott’s fictitious identity theft police report was among the voluminous suspicious reports submitted by Ally Financial.

On July 1, 2022, Investigators spoke with Tiffani Sims, a Michigan native. Sims declared she hadn’t filed an identity theft report and had not given Brisby permission to do so because she’d been in the hospital for months.

Investigator Barbar concluded in her warrant affidavit: “The investigation of the 133 fictitious police reports reveals an attempt to defraud the financial institutions identified as Ally Financial, Nevada West Financial Institutions; Santander Consumer USA, Discover Bank, First Credit Union, Credit Central, and Bluestem Brands, out of $3,340,672.” Barbara continued. “And we confirmed the fraudulent use of at least 109 pieces of identifying information belonging to twelve individuals.”

Conclusion

Credit repair companies involved in credit washing or other financial scheme systems aren’t interested in helping customers. They’re interested in making money, lots of it, without the police catching them. Once fraud is exposed, the consumers who paid shady repair companies to fix their credit by having bad debts removed from their history report eventually end up the loser with no lasting good credit. And they also lost their money. Banks report 98 per cent of identity theft claims they receive are phoney and that it is difficult to assist real victims of identity theft.

Once the dust settles, credit washing fraud is another heavy expense passed on to U.S. citizens through higher fees, higher APR and other extra expenses.

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