Sheriff’s Detectives Arrest Suspected Identity Thief

A nearly nine month long investigation by Sheriff’s Detectives has led to the arrest of a suspected identity thief who bilked several local victims out of at least $158,000.

Sheriff’s Detectives began their investigation in early April, 2010 after a Santa Barbara area man reported that someone had used the internet to transfer more than $5,000 from the victim’s legitimate bank account into a fraudulent bank account that had recently been opened under his name.

Over the next two months, Sheriff’s detectives began working three more cases in which the victims, who lived in the Goleta/Santa Barbara area, reported similar crimes in which someone had used the victim’s name to open a fraudulent bank account and then transferred thousands of dollars from the victim’s legitimate bank account. In one case, the suspect transferred $65,500 into a fraudulent account; in the two other cases, the suspect transferred $11,500 and $16,500. In each case the suspect would visit various Wal-Mart stores in Southern California at which he would purchase money orders with the ill gotten funds.