Shopping spree on stolen card nets charges

PALMER — A man already charged with stealing from multiple family members was hit with a new set of charges Saturday after troopers say he stole a business credit card from a friend and racked up $2,300 in charges.

Raymond Keown III, 22, of Wasilla, was charged earlier this month with stealing an Xbox from his brother, a rifle from his grandmother and a pair of air compressors from his uncle.

He was an inmate at Mat-Su Pre-Trial when trooper Timothy Cronin interviewed him about the credit card.

In court documents, Cronin writes that he got wind of the credit card on June 6 when investigating a different theft in the Williwaw Way subdivision. A woman on scene of the investigation pulled him aside and told him that she’d had a Lowe’s credit card that belonged to a local auto body shop.

She’d stopped working for the auto body shop in April and the card was in her car. She meant to give it back but didn’t get around to it.

At least she didn’t before Keown and Makenzie Langendorf — who was arrested on theft and fraud charges the same day Keown went down for stealing from his family — spotted it in her car.

On June 4, “Keown asked for a ride … to go to the Lowe’s in Wasilla. At the time, (she) was unaware that Keown had the stolen card, and they walked into the store together however shopped separate and did not check out together. After Lowes, Keown asked (the woman) to pawn the items for him because he did not have any ID with him,” Cronin writes.

Keown explained that he had paid for the items — a Dewalt tool kit and a Husqvarna weed trimmer — with a gift card but wanted cash instead. The items netted $235 at a pair of pawn shops.

The woman told Cronin that after she figured out Keown had taken the card she confronted him and Langendorf. She and Langendorf tussled, and the woman wound up getting the card back.

Cronin called the owner of the auto body shop who said he hadn’t noticed fraud on his account but didn’t check it regularly. He said that the woman had been calling him, trying to meet with him, and that it seemed urgent.

Cronin’s account of the charges Keown allegedly made include a $536 purchase of a Dewalt tool kit, a $735 purchase of another tool kit and a weed trimmer, a $18 purchase of moving boxes, a $536 purchase of yet another Dewalt tool kit, and a $488 purchase of a chain saw. The total comes to $2,303. Troopers tracked down all the items except the boxes.

Cronin noted that he talked to both Keown and Langendorf. He wrote that Langendorf claimed the woman the card was stolen from was aware and used the card before Keown did, but, Cronin writes, store surveillance tapes don’t support her claim.

“Keown admitted that he obtained the card from (the woman), knowing that it belonged to her former boss. Keown stated that (she) told him that her boss was unaware that she had the card,” Cronin writes.

Keown’s new charges include six theft counts and five of fraudulent use of an access device. He remains jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial facility and will need to find a third party to watch him before he can be released.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.