GavelA California man will spend nearly seven years in prison for a scheme involving fake credit and debit cards. Forty-nine-year-old Stephen Thomas of Los Angeles led a group that included three other men who planned to use counterfeit credit and debit cards to withdrawal money from casinos in the midwest.

The plot was discovered when a suspicious package turned up at a Des Moines hotel. Police found the fake credit and debit cards inside the box. The cards had stolen information encoded on them, but the names of Thomas and the three other men on the front.

Thomas was already wanted on a federal warrant for escape at the time of his arrest. He was sentenced to 80 months in federal prison.