The boyfriend of Gabby Petito, whose body was found at a national park in Wyoming after a cross-country trip with him, has been charged with unauthorised use of a debit card.
It comes as searchers continued looking for Brian Laundrie on Thursday in Florida swampland.
A federal grand jury indictment filed in US District Court in Wyoming alleges Mr Laundrie used a Capital One Bank card and someone's personal identification number to make unauthorised withdrawals or payments worth more than 1,000 dollars (£730) during the period in which the 22-year-old went missing.
It does not say who the card belonged to.
FBI spokeswoman Courtney Bernal declined to reveal the nature of the payments made on the debit card.
Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider said an arrest warrant issued on Wednesday over the alleged fraudulent use of the bank card will allow law enforcement across the country to continue pursuing Mr Laundrie while the investigation continues into Miss Petito's death.
Mr Laundrie has been named a person of interest in the case.
The case has garnered enormous public interest, but also raised uncomfortable questions over the unequal attention given to the hundreds of cases of Native American and other minority women missing or murdered across the United States.
In Florida, searchers on Thursday spent a fifth unsuccessful day looking for Mr Laundrie in the forbidding wilderness preserve near his parents' home.
The search at the Carlton Reserve park was set to resume on Friday, said Joshua Tayler with the city of North Port, where the park is located.
It began after Mr Laundrie told his parents he was going there, several days after returning alone on September 1 from his trip to the west of the US with Miss Petito.
The indictment says the unauthorised use of the debit card occurred from about August 30 to September 1.
Mr Laundrie family lawyer Steven Bertolino said it is his understanding the arrest warrant was related to activities that occurred after the death of Miss Petito, and not to her actual demise.
Miss Petito was reported missing on September 11 by her parents after she did not respond to calls and texts for several days while the couple visited parks in the West.
Her body was discovered on Sunday in the vicinity of a remote, undeveloped campground along the border of Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming.
Teton County Coroner Brent Blue classified Miss Petito's death as a homicide - meaning her death was caused by another person - but did not disclose how she was killed pending further autopsy results.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here