A 30-year-old man arrested on an accusation he stole money and credit cards from a man’s locker at the Darien YMCA is “linked to similar crimes across multiple states,” Darien police said.
Police gave this account, including accusations not proven in court:
Photo from Darien P.D.
Darien P.D. arrest photo of Alende Olteanu, 30, of 48th Avenue in Woodside, Queens, charged with larceny and stealing credit cards.
The theft was reported to police on March 7. It involved $500 in cash and two credit cards. The cards were used to buy an item or items at the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Greenwich, where a total of $11,206 was charged to the credit card accounts.
A police investigation which included surveillance recordings led to identifying the suspect, Alende Olteanu of the Woodside section of Queens, New York.
After he was arrested in New Jersey, he was extradited to Connecticut on June 2 and arraigned in state Superior Court in Stamford on charges of sixth-degree larceny, a misdemeanor, and two counts of stealing a payment card, a felony. Olteanu’s bond is set at $50,000.
The following information is from a Greenwich Time report, citing arrest warrant affidavits:
The Darien victim saw a man later identified as Olteanu hovering near him when he entered the code to his lock.
On May 31, Greenwich police had also arrested Olteanu on larceny, criminal impersonation and identity theft charges stemming from a Feb. 11 incident.
Those charges stemmed from a complaint by a Rye, New York man who said his credit cards were stolen from a locker at the YMCA in Rye.
Arrest warrant affidavits said Olteanu used a forged North Dakota driver’s license to get day passes allowing him to enter the YMCAs where he stole from gym lockers.
One of the stolen cards was used to make a purchase of $22,304 at Tiffany’s on Greenwich Avenue. An attempt was made the same day with one of the cards to buy $1,180 worth of items at a Greenwich Avenue cosmetics store, but the charge was declined.
A Rye police detective told Greenwich police that the fraudulent activity Olteanu was accused of committing was similar to credit-cards thefts from locker rooms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
According to one of the arrest warrant affidavits, Olteanu was identified when police got in touch with a British law enforcement agency that used high-end facial recognition software.
The affidavits also said Olteanu is a Romanian national and part of an international organized crime ring headquartered in Romania.
For the Greenwich charges, Olteanu’s bond is set at $250,000. He is scheduled to appear Aug. 12 for both cases in the Stamford court.