Jennifer Anne Cardemas Santa Clara County booking photo
SANTA CLARA COUNTY – A former San Jose resident has been charged with defrauding more than a dozen people for more than $100,000, offering them non-existent jobs at local tech companies, or by selling fake passes to Disneyland.
In several cases, Santa Clara County families traveled to Anaheim or Orlando, Florida only to find that their Disney passes were not valid and their rooms were not booked.
22-year-old Jennifer Anne Cardema was arraigned on numerous counts of grand theft, identity theft, passing insufficient funds checks, and aggravated white collar crime enhancements, at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, November 13 in Department 23 of the Hall of Justice. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.
“We can closely quantify the loss of money in fraud cases. What we can’t easily quantify is the trauma of fraud,” Prosecutor Jennifer Deng said. “This investigation is ongoing and we hope that anyone else who may have been victimized by this person will come forward and speak with us.”
Over two years, Cardema, who recently moved to Pacifica, defrauded at least 14 acquaintances or friends of acquaintances. During several scenarios, she pretended that she was an employee of Disneyland and sold discounted annual passes and hotel rooms. To perpetrate her frauds, the defendant created a fake LinkedIn page, fake Disneyland passes, fake Disneyland emails and made up fake business cards decorated with Mickey Mouse and Frozen’s Elsa.
Deng said, “Other victims were conned by the suspect, believing that she was hiring them at Intel or YouTube so that they would provide personal identifying information in job applications.” However, a few days after the initial contact, the suspect opened credit cards under their names and went on shopping sprees.
When numerous victims demanded their money back, Cardema would continue to scam them by sending them checks that were returned for insufficient funds.
Anyone who has been victimized by Cardema can call District Attorney Investigator Richard Fong at (408) 792- 2983.
