Jennifer Poliandro

Convicted and sentenced. Jennifer Poliandro, 44, of Wyandanch, New York, was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft and sentenced to 36 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara for a scheme built on counterfeit military identification cards and passport cards.

Introduction

Jennifer Poliandro, a 44-year-old resident of Wyandanch, New York, in Suffolk County, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for her part in a conspiracy that turned personal information scraped from the internet into counterfeit military identification cards and United States passport cards, and used those cards to pull money out of bank accounts . The conviction covers two counts — conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft — and was announced by U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo of the Western District of New York . The scheme ran its documented course over roughly a week in February 2026, with a documented in-person withdrawal at a western New York bank branch .

Background Information

Between February 18 and February 26, 2026, Poliandro conspired with others to obtain the personally identifiable information of multiple victims from the internet and use it to create counterfeit military identification cards and United States passport cards . The fraudulent cards were then used to obtain and attempt to obtain money from various banks in the Western District of New York area . The manufacture of convincing federal- and military-identity documents was the engine of the scheme: with a victim’s real details printed onto a counterfeit card, a conspirator could present at a bank counter as someone else and run the institution’s own identity checks against its customer records .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

The documented strike came on February 18, 2026, when Poliandro walked into a Lake Shore Bank branch in Fredonia, New York, carrying a counterfeit military identification card in the name of an individual residing in Jamestown, New York . Using that card, she obtained $7,800 from a home equity line of credit account associated with the Jamestown victim — money taken from a person who was not in the room and had not authorized the withdrawal . The total loss amount of the scheme, including actual loss and intended loss, is between $15,000 and $40,000, a band that captures both the money taken and the attempts that did not clear . The conduct at the center of the case — manufacturing counterfeit military IDs and passport cards from stolen identities and presenting them at bank counters — is what converted an identity-harvesting operation into a bank fraud, and it is the conduct to which the conviction attaches .

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Franz M. Wright . The sentencing investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, under the direction of Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Anthony Patrone, and the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service New York Field Office, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Nicholas Fanelli — pairing the agency that polices document fraud with the one that protects passports . The release contains no statement from Poliandro or her defense, and no victim statements are included .

Current Status

Poliandro is serving a 36-month federal prison sentence imposed by Judge Arcara . The conviction stands at the sentencing stage as far as the release discloses; the release does not state a restitution amount, a supervised-release term, or a self-surrender date . Any appeal, and the disposition of her unnamed co-conspirators, is likewise not addressed in the public record the release provides .

Impact on Their Career/Life

Poliandro’s name now sits on a federal felony record for a document-based bank fraud scheme — a conviction for building counterfeit military IDs and passport cards out of strangers’ personal information and cashing them at bank counters . The three-year sentence and the $15,000-to-$40,000 loss band fix the scale of the scheme on the public record, and the case documents how little infrastructure a fraud of this kind needs: internet-scraped identities, counterfeit cards, and the confidence to stand at a teller window as someone else .

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of New York, “Suffolk County woman going to prison for her role in fraud scheme,” October 14, 2026 — source