Identity Theft 2017

Police: Woman, 24, Tried to Cash Phony Check for More Than $1,600

Two Chipotle Restaurants in Darien Affected by Security Breach Leaving Customers Vulnerable to ID Theft

Stolen Store Reward Cards and Suspicious Activity in Parklands Drive

Darien Woman Loses $2,200 in I.D. Theft Case Using ‘Square Cash’ App

Darien Woman Reports $8,000 Stolen in NYC from Her Bank Account

Darien Man Informed of Identity Theft, Cancels Two Fraudulent Transactions

Identity Theft Attempted Against Darien Man, 35, With 3 Applications for Store Credit

Darien Resident a Victim of Latest Identity Theft Related to an IRS Tax Scam

Darien Residents Report Attempted IRS Tax Scams with Stolen Identities

Income Tax-Related Identity Theft Scams Down But Not Out: How to Protect Yourself

Bank Cards Stolen While Woman at Store, Gets Texts About Suspicious Activity

Identity Theft and Potential Identity Theft Cases Reported by Darien Residents

Two Unauthorized Charges from Darien Woman’s Account Leave a Trail

Alleged Identity Theft from Both Sides: Darien Victims in Two Cases, Arrest in a Third

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | July 11, 2017

Business

By David Gurliacci | May 28, 2017

Public Safety

By John Paul Barce | May 18, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | May 9, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | April 27, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | April 26, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | March 22, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | March 20, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | March 19, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | March 19, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | March 7, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | March 5, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | February 26, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | February 6, 2017

Emily Ramirez forged check arrest photo 07-12-17

A 24-year-old woman who showed up at TD Bank in Darien with a check for more than $1,600 and a form of identification that made a teller suspicious was arrested on a felony fraud charge, police said. Darien police described the incident with this account, including accusations not proven in court:

Late in the afternoon on Monday, July 3, Emily Ramirez walked into TD Bank at 55 Post Road and handed a teller a check for $1679.25

Ramirez, who lives on 186th Street in the Bronx, was charged with first-degree forgery (a felony), third-degree identity theft and criminal attempt to commit fourth-degree larceny. The teller said that after Ramirez said she wanted to cash a check, she stood their silently until the teller asked for the check. Ramirez handed it over and also gave the teller a New Jersey identification card with Ramirez’ picture on it (but not with Ramirez’ actual name). The teller later told police that the ID card looked “very strange” to him, although the name and address on it matched what was on the check.

When some hacker got into Chipotle digital records containing customer debit and credit card information, only some of the chain’s restaurants were affected, but among them were the two restaurants in Darien, according to the company. Chipotle announced on Friday that the data breach affected certain restaurants at certain times. In its online announcement, the company also provided a search function to show whether its restaurants in particular communities were affected by the breach. Both the Chipotle at 71 Post Road and at the Interstate 95 Darien North rest stop were affected. Only credit or debit cards used from March 26 to April 18 were vulnerable from the hacking. If you went to either Chipotle in Darien in that span of time, your credit card information could be used and someone could charge something to your account, according to Chipotle.

Several stolen store reward cards and a Triple-A membership card were found Monday, May 8 in the parking lot of Parklands Office Park. The cards belonged to a Milford woman who told police that her purse had been stolen from an office building in Orange earlier the same day. The victim’s credit cards were used in Norwalk and online that day. A building manager for the office park at Parklands Drive told police that between 5 and 5:30 p.m. that day, four suspicious people entered at least two offices in the building. (The office park now has one building in use, the other one is being torn down, to be replaced by a nursing home.)

Police are continuing to look into the matter, but they say they don’t know whether or not there’s a connection between the four people and the stolen cards.

For one Darien woman, the “Square Cash” app had a round hole in it, big enough for a thief to remove $2,200 from her bank account. Darien police gave this account of the matter:

The woman, a 39-year-old Edgewood Road resident, was notified on Thursday, April 27 that her account with Webster Bank had a zero balance. The woman discovered that two withdrawals had been made from her account the day before, one for $1,200 and the other for $1,000. She reported the theft to Darien police on May 1. The withdrawals were listed as being made to “SQL* Bruton” through the online application Square Cash. The victim is not an active user of “Square Cash” but was in the past.

A Miles Road woman told police on Saturday, April 22 that money was taken from her bank account in two withdrawals made in New York City. The woman, 48, said a total of $8,000 was taken out in two withdrawals that she saw once she got her TD Bank statement. Police said there was no evidence of any local criminal activity related to the withdrawals, and TD Bank was looking into the incident. Avoiding identity theft

Here’s an online identity theft information brochure from Darien Police. The FBI has an Internet Crime Complaint Center set up to inform people and help victims.
A federal government Web page on identity theft with some prevention advice, and what to do if you become a victim.

A 35-year-old Miller Road man was contacted by T-Mobile last Wednesday and told of a suspicious order made under his name. That led to the man checking his credit monitoring service and finding another fraudulent transaction, Darien police said. The other transaction was an inquiry/account application at Overstock.com. Police, who were informed of the matter on April 13, said the man was able to cancel both transactions with no loss of money. Police had no evidence of any local criminal activity and no suspects.

Police Snow Darien Police Sign Winter 03-22-17

A 35-year-old Darien man told police that he’d received a phone call from Target that someone had applied for a credit card in his name. Soon after, he learned that similar applications had been made in his name for Walmart and Saks Fifth Avenue accounts. The man reported the attempted identity theft to police on Saturday. He put a credit freeze on his credit report to try to prevent any further attempts at identity theft. No financial losses to him resulted from the identity theft attempts, and police know of no local connection involving the stealing of his personal information for the applications.

The Internal Revenue Service notified a 55-year-0ld Darien woman recently that a tax return for 2016 had been filed in her name. The only problem was that she hadn’t filed it yet. When she contacted the IRS to tell them that, they told her to file a report with local police, which she did last week. Scammers have been filing bogus tax returns in the name of people whose identifying information they’ve stolen in order to get tax refunds sent to them. The victim is not only the federal government but also the person whose identity has been stolen: It takes the IRS a while to straighten out the matter, and taxpayers could themselves be waiting for a refund.

So far, this year’s tax fraud cases involving Darien residents aren’t as successful for the thieves, according to what Darien police were told. Twice this month in separate cases, the IRS notified town residents about communications involving their tax returns that the town residents had never sent. In neither case was the tax fraud successful, but they each show that information on the residents was being used by someone. Here’s what Darien police were told earlier this month about two unrelated incidents:

A husband and wife both got letters from the IRS saying someone had asked the government agency for their tax returns for the past three years and had power-of-attorney forms.

The couple’s accountant in Iowa told them that his IRS file was hacked. In the other case, a Darien woman received a letter from the IRS telling her that her tax return had been rejected.

The good news is that ID theft scams are less prevalent than they were in previous years. The bad news is that there’s plenty still around. Both the Internal Revenue Service and Better Business Bureau have (overlapping) advice about protecting yourself from scammers who want your personal information for identity theft and tax fraud. “Everyone should guard their personal information by protecting their computers and using extreme caution when viewing emails or getting surprise phone calls,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “We also encourage people to share this information with their friends and family,” he said.

A 55-year-old shopper had two credit cards stolen from her purse while she was shopping at Trader Joe’s, and the thieves acted quickly, trying to get cash advances from the cards from the bank next door. The incident was reported to Darien police two Mondays ago, at 2:15 p.m. on Feb. 27, shortly after it happened. Here’s how police described it:

The woman, a Norwalk resident, also lost her driver’s license and two casino rewards cards along with the debit cards while she was shopping in the store at 436 Post Road. She received a text message from People’s Bank asking her if she’d recently requested a cash advance for $2,500.

These cases of identity theft were recently reported to Darien police:

On Thursday, Feb. 23, a woman in her 70s told police that someone had applied for and received a Citicard Mastercard credit card in her name. Citicard had told the woman that the card had been given out. The woman’s address and Social Security number were used in the application. The card was used to make a purchase, but the police report didn’t say where or how much was spent.

A 58-year-old Darien woman found two unauthorized charges in a statement from her credit card recently, but the nature of the items purchased appear to lead to a suspect. The two charges were made on Feb. 13 and 14, and each was made out to a Fairfield County newspaper: $55.92 in payment for an advertisement in the Newtown Bee on the 13th and $105 in payment for an ad in the Connecticut Post on the 14th. The victim went to police on Saturday, Feb. 18.

« August 2022 »

On the same week that a Queens, N.Y. man turned himself in to Darien police on charges related to identity theft, two Darien residents reported being victimized by the lucrative business. The arrest came when Shamar Adams, 27, turned himself in at Police Headquarters after he’d been told by a Massachusetts state trooper or police officer (who stopped him for an alleged traffic offense) that Darien police had a warrant for his arrest. The warrant stemmed from a 2015 incident and investigation. Darien police gave this account of it (including accusations not proven in court):

Back on June 2, 2015, at 4:20 a.m., a police officer saw a car parked at the Exxon service station at 1358 Post Road (the one with the wooden bear in front of it). The gas station was closed, so the officer stopped to ask what the occupants of the car were doing there.