A Milwaukee woman has pleaded guilty to six felony counts of theft and identity theft in connection with a long-running scam in which she allegedly targeted men that she met in Chicago nightclubs and at a suburban casino bar.
Davisha Trayler, 33, was in the Cook County jail awaiting trial for a series of bar-related crimes when COVID arrived in early 2020. Authorities released her as concerns about the virus’ spread within the jail grew.
Within months, she allegedly picked up another man at a bar and committed the same scam.
Prosecutors first accused Traylor of stealing and using the credit cards of men she met at bars in River North, Old Town, and elsewhere in 2018 and 2020, records show. The alleged victims include tourists from Texas and California and residents of Uptown and the Gold Coast.
A judge released her on her own recognizance in four of those cases. While she was out, she got picked up on another ID theft case, and she remained in jail until April 2020, when a judge let her out on her own recognizance due to concerns about the potential for COVID exposure in jail, records show.
Just six months later, seemingly unconcerned about contracting COVID, Traylor traveled to Rivers Casino in Des Plaines with a small group of women. Prosecutors say she even scanned her driver’s license to access the surveillance camera-filled casino at 2:03 a.m.
Once inside, she bellied up next to a 26-year-old Lakeview man as he sat at Lotus Bar, according to prosecutors and a CPD report.
She agreed to meet the man at his home in the 2600 block of North Racine and then rode to his house in a red Jaguar bearing Wisconsin plates that was occupied by other women, police said.
The victim told police he didn’t know what happened after he walked Traylor into his home because he thought some kind of drug knocked him out. When he woke up, his iPhone and credit cards were missing, and someone had been using his Uber account to ride around.
Surveillance video shows Traylor entering the man’s home, prosecutors said, and no one else went inside between the time he arrived and the time he noticed his things missing.
Police also found surveillance video of Traylor racking up $1,661 in charges on the man’s credit cards at a Milwaukee-area Walmart and other stores, prosecutors said. The alleged victim identified her in a photo line-up.
Traylor reached a deal with prosecutors in which she pleaded guilty to two counts of felony theft and four counts of identity theft. Officials dropped multiple theft, identity theft, and other felonies in the deal.
Judge William O’Brien sentenced her to three years on one of the ID theft counts and two years on all other charges. The sentence for the Rivers Casino incident will be served consecutive to the others under O’Brien’s order.
Traylor will receive a 50% sentence reduction for good behavior and 347 days credit for time spent in jail before she pleaded. Illinois Department of Corrections records indicate she will be paroled on March 1, 2023.
On the night after the alleged Rivers Casino incident, Chicago police were investigating a series of similar crimes reported in the River North neighborhood.
Detectives who were maintaining surveillance on Tiana Trammell, a suspect in the downtown incidents, saw the same red Jaguar with Wisconsin plates that Traylor rode from the casino to Lincoln Park circling the area, according to a CPD report.
Cops arrested Trammell, 25, and Tjwana Rainey, 32, later that evening after they drugged a man in a downtown bar and literally carried him to their nearby car where he was robbed, prosecutors said during an October bond court appearance.
Trammell is accused of participating in at least ten similar robberies in the city last year to gain at least $85,000 in stolen valuables and credit card purchases at Milwaukee-area Walmart stores and other retailers.
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