erm
@Kingzongo more to meets the eye indeed.
@I didn't do IT . Right about some points, wrong on others.
Background: Moved to california from UK about 5 years ago. 6 figure salary, legal permanent resident. I got the essentials; social security number, drivers licence and ID, apartment in wealthy area of silicon valley and lived for 5 months. I met the san jose area director for citibank and he hooked me up with a bank account. The bank got used to me getting nice paychecks every two weeks. After the 5 months, I Went to the bank and asked for a credit card. Denied. While they do check if nothings bad hits, american credit scores (from 550 to about 800 odd) are seriously hurt if no credit history shows up. Mine was rock bottom as I was new and there was nothing my mate could do to help, even seeing the amount i was being paid directly into his bank. He gave me some advice, so I took out a car loan (not from citibank btw), planted a 20% deposit on a $38k car and got royally raped for 14.9% interest. It took me 3 years of payments on low limit (read $800) credit cards and the car loan to get a 700 credit score, after which credit card companies were offering lines of credit in the region of $8,000 per card. I was able to change my car loan and get interest around 7.5% which is much better, but nothing like the 0% other people seem to get.
So im wholly not convinced this woman can waltz into the USA with no credit history, a fictional number on paper and walk away with a $25k citi card. What seems more likely is a "friend" involved in this circle who can override a credit line or approval for a bank/card provider who would give higher limit cards to the members of the scheme. Once one bank gives a high limit card, other banks do tend to follow suit, however its getting that high lmit card early seems difficult without someone higher up in the banking chain. Once you have these lines of creidt, you can use bust out schemes to run up one card, pay the balance with a balance transfer cheque from another card, run it up again, rinse. repeat. send more cheques. etc.