Rye Brook Blotter: Identity Thieves Steal $1900 By Hacking into Email Account

Criminals have become more crafty when it comes to stealing someone's identity, as a Rye Brook woman and her friends recently discovered when someone hacked into her email account.

The woman contacted police on May 28 to report that an unknown person hacked into her Hotmail account and contacted every single person listed in her address book. 

The person  pretended to be the woman and sent an email to all her friends, telling them she was in trouble somewhere in England and needed money to return home. The person asked the friends to forward money right away, and one of them did, sending $1900 to an address in England.

Rye Brook Police advised the woman to contact her Internet provider, but unfortunately for her friend, there is very little police can do to retrieve the money since it was sent overseas.

Rye Brook Police also received a second report on May 28 of identity theft via email.

A  woman told police that someone had hacked into her Hotmail account and sent an email to all the contacts in her address book.

Similar to the first case, the hacker pretended to be the woman and emailed her friends stating that she was stranded in London and needed money to get home. The hacker asked for someone to send $1700 via Western Union, but this time no one sent any money.

The woman received a call from her friends asking if she actually sent the email. She told them no and soon after reported the crime to the police. She told police that she cannot get into her email account because the hacker changed her password. 

Two other Rye Brook residents have reported identity thefts to police in the last two weeks.

On May 21, a woman told police that she received a call from Bank of America notifying her about four charges they believe she did not make. Three charges were in the amount of $29.95 to an Internet company and one was for $1 to another Internet company. The woman closed all the accounts and alerted the credit bureau. Police said she will not be held liable for the charges.

On May 22, another woman reported an identity theft to the police. She said that around May 20 she received a call from CitiBank stating that her Sears credit card showed possible fraudulent activities.  

She told the bank that she didn't even own a Sears Card and the bank told her there were two charges for a total of $500 from Sears and Kmart for credit cards opened in her name.

The next day, the woman received three denials letters from Chase, Target and CitiBank Sears. She received a denial for the Sears card because she already had a credit card from the store that someone had opened without her knowledge.

Target told the woman that someone tried to open  a store credit card in Virginia Beach using her social security number, date of birth and yearly income. However, the last two pieces of information were incorrect, so the Target card was denied.

Rye Brook Police Lieutenant Eugene Matthews said the increase in online shopping has made many more people susceptible to identity theft.

He said the police can take a victim's report and follow-up on the incident as much as possible, but it is usually the responsibility of identity theft victims to notify the credit bureau and all their creditors about the crime.

Matthews said victims of identity theft involving overseas transactions should not only contact their local police, but also the U.S. State Department, which encourages victims of international financial scams to report the crime to several government agencies.