A Killing in China Basin - By Kirk Russell Page 0,46
June. I’ve got the date here, hold on a second.’
Papers rustled.
‘Sorry about that, it was in June—’
‘This past June?’
‘Yes, and eleven hundred and twelve dollars, enough so it doesn’t look like your typical fraudulent usage. The card belongs to an elderly woman in San Rafael. She didn’t even know she was missing her card. Her daughter figured it out. She told me her mom has twenty cards and hardly ever uses any of them.’
‘What’s the cardholder’s name?’
‘Miriam Shapiro. Do you want her address and the daughter’s phone numbers? I can email them to you. Here, I’ll do that now. Let me know when you get them.’
‘I got ’em.’
‘Where was I?’
‘Miriam Shapiro’s daughter.’
‘That’s right. OK, so I know what the daughter believes, but I don’t really know what the San Rafael Police concluded. It probably makes more sense for you to talk directly with them.’
‘I’ll call them.’
‘Good, and here’s the story. Last summer, old Miriam broke her hip and needed home care. After the home care started, a Visa disappeared from a bundle of a dozen credit cards Miriam had sitting in a desk drawer with a rubber band around them. The credit card company was then contacted with a change of billing address. Whoever made contact had all the requisite info on Miriam Shapiro, so they gathered up more than just a Visa at the house. Bills started mailing to a UPS Store outlet mailbox in San Francisco.’
Raveneau copied down the address.
‘Identity thieves will rent a mailbox or an apartment and pay the rent out of cash advances on cards. They’ll make significant buys, pay the bill in full and then get new credit card offers and a higher line of credit. When it gets high enough they borrow the whole amount and disappear. It takes a certain amount of risk management and patience.’
It was a common enough credit fraud scheme, but Raveneau didn’t comment. He didn’t want to derail Moore’s momentum.
‘The daughter for reasons of her own – she told me she was just curious because her mother never lets her open mail or pay bills – went online and checked her mom’s credit score. When she printed off a credit report she saw all the cards paid except for this Visa with the fifteen grand run up and a new address. She called the credit card company and the police.
‘But here’s where it gets more interesting. An arrest was made of a Latino woman at the UPS Store in San Francisco as she picked up mail, which in this case included eleven other credit card bills, Miriam Shapiro’s and ten others that were also fraudulently obtained. Your department made the arrests but it was a San Rafael Police operation. I have the case file number. I’m emailing it to you, right now.
‘It turned out the Latino woman didn’t speak English and could prove she’d only been in the country for three months. She was actually here legally and there were lots of tears and weeping because she claimed she’d never broken a law in her life and couldn’t understand why anyone would do this to her. All she did was answer an ad in a Hispanic newspaper and get a part-time job to collect mail from a few spots, and that may have been the truth.’ He paused a beat. ‘I believe it was.
‘She met with the woman who hired her one time only. The interview was in Spanish and she got laid out on her mail collection duties and told how she’d be paid – in cash and dropped once a month where she’s living. Because she was only getting three hundred bucks a month, getting paid in cash didn’t seem like a big deal to her.’
‘I’d like to get a printout of what was bought with the cards.’
‘The most significant purchases were for computers, printers, phones, a shredder – equipment as though someone was setting up an office.’
‘Shipped or bought in stores?’
‘Shipped, bought online, and I’ll give you the address they went to. That’s about it. That’s all I’ve got.’
‘That’s a lot and thank you.’
‘You call me anytime you need any help. I’ll talk to you later.’
Raveneau called the San Rafael Police and a Lieutenant Cordova got on the line and suggested he drive over.
‘I’ll copy everything before you get here,’ Cordova said.
San Rafael’s police station was beneath the city offices on Fifth Street, down a handful of brick-lined steps off the sidewalk. Lieutenant Cordova handled credit fraud and business was booming.