No arrest has been made in the case against a former McMinn County, Tennessee, detective charged with aggravated identity theft and wire fraud linked to more than $27,000 in purchases made from financial information he allegedly stole during a search.
Federal court records in Chattanooga indicate that former detective Joshua Rhodes has not yet been taken into custody on the 11-count federal grand jury indictment, and Rhodes does not yet have a lawyer or court date on record.
Officials in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chattanooga declined to comment on the case when contacted Thursday, and no phone number for Rhodes could be found.
The charges against Rhodes go back to a McMinn County Sheriff's Office search operation on April 28, 2016, at the motel room of a man referred to only as "JO" in court records. Rhodes was part of the team assigned to serve the search warrant.
Federal officials accuse Rhodes of devising a scheme "to defraud and obtain money by false and fraudulent pretenses from financial institutions and businesses" in Tennessee and elsewhere, court records state.
Rhodes "stole credit cards from a criminal suspect" and didn't record on the search warrant all of the property seized during the search, didn't submit all the items seized to the evidence custodian and didn't complete log sheets on the search, records state.
Records state that Rhodes "contacted the financial institutions that issued the credit cards to JO, representing himself to be JO, and had the billing address changed to the defendant's personal residential address."
Officials said in the indictment that Rhodes went to stores and businesses to make purchases with the ill-gotten credit cards. The purchases caused businesses to transmit a wire in interstate commerce in the process of making purchases, records state.
The activity continued from April 2016 to July 26, 2016, and the fraudulent purchases were made from RVs for Less, Walmart, the Country Music Hall of Fame, Holiday Inn Express, Island Grove Outdoor Center, Motorcycle Superstore, Elite Audio & Window Tint, Northgate RV Center, Electronics Express and Rimtyme, according to court records.
The purchases totaled $27,743.92.
The count of aggravated identity theft stemmed from Rhodes' use of "JO's" identity to commit the fraud, records state.
It was unclear how soon an arrest might be made in Rhodes' case.
The felony case, when prosecuted, will go before U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier.
McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy said the county department was not involved in the federal investigation.
"We referred the issues to the [district attorney's] office who asked for a TBI investigation. They proceeded from there," Guy said Thursday of the case's trek to federal court.
Rhodes was terminated from his job on July 27, 2016, in the wake of the search warrant issues, Guy said.
Guy said Rhodes no longer resides in McMinn County and that he wasn't sure where the former detective now lives.
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.