Nassau County target of gift card fraud

With its gleaming malls and boulevards lined with stores, the shopping mecca that is Nassau County has become a target of thieves wielding fraudulent gift cards loaded with stolen credit or debit card information, law enforcement officials said.

"This is a county with a lot of shopping and enterprise places," Nassau Assistant District Attorney Diane Peress, head of the Economic Crimes Bureau. "Nassau County is a very attractive place to use gift cards."

While exact numbers of cases of fraudulent gift cards were not available from Nassau or Suffolk police, investigators said more and more cases of identity theft are linked to the gift cards.

"It's exploded. There's at least one large arrest a week," Peress said. Criminals take the gift cards, which are either depleted of value or shoplifted off the rack at retailers, and digitally load them with stolen credit and debit card information, said Sgt. Lucy Graziano of the Nassau police Crime Against Property squad.

Then, the thieves hit the mall, the ATM or the gas station.

A Queens man was arrested Tuesday in New Hyde Park after he used a gift card loaded with stolen credit card info to fill a car with $20 worth of gas, police said. George Alochukwu, 36, of 110-36 156th St., Jamaica, had 42 re-encoded gift cards on him when he was arrested at the BP gas station at 1301 Jericho Tpke., police said.

Alochukwu pleaded not guilty to charges of grand larceny, three counts of possession of a forged instrument, two counts of identity theft and one count of scheme to defraud at his arraignment Wednesday in First District Court in Hempstead. He was held on $60,000 bail or $120,000 bond and is due back in court Friday. His family could not be reached Wednesday.

The surge is tied to the growing popularity of gift cards in the past two years, Peress said, and stores that do not require visual verification of the card used in the sale - such as gas stations - are frequently targeted.

Thieves are also becoming better at identity theft, said Lisa LaBruno, vice president of loss prevention and legal affairs for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. "Criminals are becoming more and more sophisticated, and fraudulent gift cards [are] an example of this sophistication," she said.

The incremental amounts on gift cards can add up quickly, authorities said.

Mohammed Alam, owner of the BP gas station where police say Alochukwu used the fraudulent gift card, told investigators he has suffered more than $100,000 in losses to such cards in the past four months, said Det. Sgt. Vincent Garcia of Nassau police. Alam declined to comment.

In Suffolk County, "It's really an unbelievable problem because there are just so many ways" of committing identity theft, said Deputy Insp. Gerard McCarthy of the Suffolk police Special Services bureau.

With John Valenti