CHICAGO – A man accused of stealing cash by posing as a charity lawyer and hijacking the Zelle accounts of people who agreed to donate has been sentenced to two years’second chance probation.”
Last spring, prosecutors said Kyri Walker, 21, and Lamar Smith, 24, worked as a team on the Magnificent Mile, seized banking apps and transferred large sums of money without authorization outside the Nike Store, 669 North Michigan.
On March 20, a 20-year-old Gold Coast resident told police two men took his phone when he accessed his Chase app outside the Nike Store. Smith blocked the victim from taking his phone back while Walker transferred $500 from the victim’s bank account, according to a CPD report.
Smith and Walker were working with a third man when they attacked a 37-year-old Uptown man at the same location on April 6, prosecutors alleged. The victim told police he was walking when three men asked him for donations. He agreed to wire $5 to their business, but officials said Walker took his phone away after unlocking the Bank of America app. According to his CPD arrest report, Walker Zell transferred $2,000 from the man’s account to an account with a woman’s name.
The second victim told police he continued to receive text messages from the robbers, “making fun” of him for being made fun of.
According to the report, the victims identified Walker in photo lineups. Detectives forwarded his information to police in the Lakeview-based Town Hall (19th) District because similar crimes had been reported along the bars on Clark Street in Wrigleyville. Officers assigned to the area for the Cubs game arrested Walker weeks later.
Walker achieved a lot with prosecutors: They dropped four counts of theft, the most serious charges he faced, and he pleaded guilty to two counts of theft by deception.
Judge Shelley Sutker-Dermer gave Walker the sentence of “second chance probation” and ordered him to get a GED and perform 40 hours of community service, court records show. Walker will have no conviction on his record and will be eligible to have the case expunged if he completes his probation.
Smith continues to fight the charges filed against him.
