A man carrying multiple stolen credit cards tried to use one of them to pay for his high-priced New Year’s Eve party bill early this morning at Saddle Ranch Bar and Grill on Sunset Boulevard.
An employee at Saddle Ranch called the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station to report the suspicious credit card. Deputies arrived just before 2 a.m. and discovered that the man, in his early 30s and a Connecticut resident, not only had multiple cards but also three different id cards, each with his photo.
The man, who has yet to be publicly identified, also had in his possession device to skim credit card information along with equipment necessary to create fake credit cards on the go, using the stolen credit card information.
West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station detectives are trying to determine the number of potential victims.
This guy was easily caught partly because he was using a low tech method that offers no real plausible deniability. For over the past 6 years the right smart phone with the relevant app allows a user to easily read information through wallets and purses on credit cards with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. Once the information is obtained, the safest approach tends to be wiring money to a fake identity of the thief. The amateur who tried stealing my identity lost on the first attempt to obtain plane tickets at the airport, stealing the identity of the most racially profiled… Read more »
@JOSH the credit card companies don’t care. Mine was stolen and in a day $10,000.00
worth of Dell computer equipment was bought. I wasn’t responsible for the payment, of course, after I signed a notarized affidavit. When I tried to follow up, I was told I was no longer the victim. I asked the rep from the fraud dept of the credit card if I would be notified about anything. Her words to me were, “You aren’t in the mix any longer, and we rarely investigate under $50,000.”
I assume that the guy who is pictured in the red jacket is the one who was arrested. If the employee who reported this had been wrong this would have been a story about racism, and red-jacket-guy would be suing.
Kudos the the Saddle Ranch employee(s) for catching this and calling the Sheriff’s station. Credit card companies should give this employee a significant financial reward for saving them thousands of dollars (and saving their cardholders from stress and head aches!).