March 3, 2008
Media Contact: Sandi Copes
Phone: (850) 245-0150
Ft. Myers Fitness Club Thief Gets Six Years in Prison
~Lee County man stole IDs, valuables while victims exercised~
TALLAHASSEE, FL - Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced that a Lee County man was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple counts of grand theft, burglary, and identity theft. David Winfrey, 46, must also pay victims more than $11,000 in restitution. He was prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution.
Over the course of seven months, Winfrey and codefendant Ransom Yates used stolen IDs to obtain guest passes to various fitness centers in Florida. Once inside an athletic club, the men would target a potential victim, follow him into the locker room and make note of his locker number. After wandering around for a few minutes to avoid suspicion, they would return to the victim’s locker, cut the lock off using bolt cutters and steal any valuables inside, including jewelry, cash, credit cards, ATM cards, driver’s licenses and other forms of identification. The pair sometimes replaced the damaged lock with another similar lock to avoid immediate detection. In other instances, they stole valuables from cars parked at the fitness centers.
Winfrey and Yates, both from Fort Myers, used the credit cards to purchase electronics, expensive watches and other jewelry, and then sent the items to a pawn shop in Chicago in exchange for cash. They also purchased hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards from retail stores using the stolen ATM cards. Over a period of several months, the men targeted gyms in Lee, Collier, Orange, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties before fleeing to Chicago, where they were arrested in August 2006. They were arrested while attempting to use a credit card that had been reported stolen from a Chicago area athletic club. After searching the suspects’ car, police found bolt cutters, a receipt from a pawn shop and numerous Florida driver’s licenses and identification cards. Both men were extradited to Florida in September 2007 after being sentenced in the Illinois case.
The investigation into the Florida case was conducted by the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. Winfrey pleaded guilty today to a total of 37 charges including 25 counts of grand theft. His sentence was handed down by Judge Edward Volz of the 20th Judicial Circuit. Yates pleaded guilty to similar charges in December and was sentenced to five years in prison.