VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – After a thorough investigation, the Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Office’s Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) arrested inmate Kareem Walter Ryer for stealing credit card information from the Internet and placing orders from the canteen, according to a CIU report.
The report also says that Ryer had an accomplice who helped him commit the fraud and place orders in the names of other inmates housed in Ryer’s block to divert attention from himself.
Ryer has been charged with six counts of felony conspiracy to commit credit card fraud, two counts of felony identity theft and one count of inmate violation. Khalil Brown of Bronx, New York, also was charged with six counts of felony conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and two counts of felony identity theft. For those six incidents, which started sometime in November 2024, the total stolen was valued at more than $1,000.
“Just because an inmate is locked up on other charges doesn’t mean they can’t find a way to keep committing crimes behind bars,” said Virginia Beach Sheriff Rocky Holcomb. “This case highlights that sometimes criminals aren’t turning over a new leaf in our jail and that they continue to victimize and pull scams from the jail housing units.”
“It also highlights the vigilance of the sworn deputies of the Criminal Intelligence Unit to investigate and shut this type of illegal activity down,” Holcomb said. CIU, under the leadership of Sgt. N. Bass with Sgt. J. Cameron and other CIU peers, used various investigative tactics to bring the case against Ryer, including voice recognition, internet address searches, jailhouse interviews and reverse-telephone number software.
“Following an extensive investigation, it was determined that an inmate in Virginia Beach Correctional Center collaborated with an out-of-state civilian to commit fraud using stolen credit information obtained from the dark web,” Cameron said. “The Criminal Intelligence Unit successfully secured 16 felony warrants in connection with this incident.”
Here is what the report said happened: After being informed by the jail’s Canteen Supervisor on Dec. 30, 2024, of possible fraud involving canteen orders/accounts, the CIU) started investigating the matter.
“Inmate Ryer would target inmates that do not typically receive Canteen and place fraudulent orders in their names so that his account didn’t get flagged,” a report on the incident explained. “Inmate Ryer would then keep most of the Canteen items once they were delivered” or resell some for a higher price using “CashApp” for payment. Inmates at the Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Office can pay to use tablets connected to the Internet.
Ryer, via a monitored phone conversation, “advised the individual that he had a plan to make extra money and wanted to use the money to post his $100,000 bond.” Ryer also said over the phone that credit card information could be stolen from “the dark web” and used to place fraudulent CareMart orders. CareMart is a way for people to buy inmates extra items such as clothing, care packages, games and other items not standardly issued to inmates. The report said Ryer also provided fake email addresses to be used with the orders.
This isn’t Ryer’s first brush with the law. He was booked in the Virginia Beach Correctional Center on Nov. 12, 2024, for five counts of forgery, five counts of identity fraud-financial loss, four counts of obtaining money by false pretenses and one count of conspiring to commit fraud.