Politics & Government
Local Bank Gets Scammed
Crimes were based in identity theft and suspects drew money from fake credit lines.
Palo Alto's First Tech Federal Credit Union was scammed nearly $36,000 this year in three separate incidents involving fake credit lines, identity theft and hefty withdrawals, according to police.
The first scam started in May when an unknown suspect made a large deposit in a new account. The exact amount was unavailable, but during the next five months, the suspect withdrew nearly $13,000 before the credit union was alerted in August to possible fraud. In mid-August, another suspect created a new account with an ATM deposit of roughly $27,000, likely from a fake credit line, and went on to withdraw close to $11,000 before the credit union closed the account in mid-August. Agents have an ATM photo of the person, police said.
A shorter scam happened in October and took the credit union just over a week to find it. The suspect deposited close to $15,000 and was able to pull out roughly $12,000 before triggering a fraud alert.
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The credit union, located at 3408 Hillview Avenue, reported the crimes last Thursday and Palo Alto detectives are pursuing the cases, police said. A credit union spokesperson located in Oregon could not be reached for comment.
Evidence is scarce, however, and complicated. Detectives have the photo, but the suspects managed the first and third scams over the internet through what appeared legitimate wire transfers and the creation of false credit cards, police said. Police said their best leads are IP addresses, which will require court-ordered warrants to search.
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The tactics ranged from withdrawing the daily ATM maximum to wire transfers to shopping sprees. Police said the suspects built the scams through identity theft, using stolen personal information to open fake credit card accounts. The majority of withdrawals and fraudulent purchases occurred in southern California, Sgt. Rick Bullerjahn said.
"They knew how to do it," Bullerjahn said. "But this isn't very sophisticated and it's very typical identity theft."
Further details on the crime methods were not available.
