Detective Sgt. Jesse DiMura is major crimes supervisor with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office.
Written By David Greisman
When unauthorized charges began to show up on people’s credit card bills, investigators tracked them to an employee at a Westminster office supplies store who had copied down customers’ names and card numbers. She had then manually typed in that information at her cash register, purchasing gift cards for herself with others’ money.
A North Carolina-based travel agent offered a trip to Hawaii, with airfare, a cruise and hotel rooms coming at a little more than $1,000, a price that should have seemed too good to be true. Dozens in Carroll County bought in and wound up being charged for a trip they never received.
Those were only two of scores of scams uncovered every year in Carroll County, where all of the law enforcement departments are involved in a campaign to uncover and discourage fraud, as well as alerting and educating the public to its deceptions. The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office itself has a group of investigators who specifically handle fraud cases. And in 2005 the county State’s Attorney’s Office started an “Economic Crimes Unit,” which works closely with all of the local police agencies.
“It’s not one countywide fraud unit, but we work together like it is one,” said Melissa Hockensmith, deputy state’s attorney and the head of the economic crimes unit.
Economic crimes can range from identity theft and compromised bank accounts to bad check scams and embezzlement. It is important for those looking into the crimes to have both training in and experience with the nuances of such investigations. And it is also necessary to have investigators who can dedicate enough hours to solving a case.
“Fraud investigating is very time-consuming because there’s a lot of paperwork involved, a lot of documentation,” said Detective Sgt. Jesse DiMura, major crimes supervisor with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office. “It takes expertise to understand what you’re seeing when you’re looking at bank records, mortgages and contracts. You need that type of white-collar training.”
DiMura and Sgt. Brad Brown handle all fraud cases, and DiMura has three additional investigators who work with him. The group of investigators who handle fraud specifically (but not exclusively) has been around since 2007, he said. They also meet once a month with the other agencies at a meeting run by Hockensmith’s office.
“We’re all on the same page,” said DiMura.
And any time the sheriff’s office has a major fraud case, its officers discuss it with Hockensmith’s economic crimes unit.
“The reason why we work so closely with them is because these cases are so complicated,” DiMura said. “In any case, you have to make sure you have all your ducks in a row. We review it with them and basically form a plan of action: Do we need more investigation? Is our foundation solid? Is there another avenue that we can explore?”
The most common type of fraud in Carroll County is identity theft, a crime that is occurring more and more often, DiMura said. He pointed, for instance, to ATM skimmers – devices that read card information and capture pin numbers so that a person can then make a duplicate of the card and purchase merchandise.
“The skimmers lay right over top of the slot where the card goes in,” DiMura said. As a test, “I try to move the slot. If it moves, I’m not going to go there.”
Among other types of identity theft: People opening bank accounts in others’ names and buying items over the Internet (“They’ll have it shipped to an address and somebody will be standing outside. The person then leaves,” DiMura said.); creating a driver’s license with someone else’s name, and taking out a mortgage in another person’s name.
There is almost an infinite variety of fraud.
They include lottery scams, in which someone tries to convince a potential victim that they have won the lottery, and that they will be receiving a check and need to send money back to cover fees. Although the checks might have proper routing numbers and account numbers, the banks eventually deem them fraudulent or bad. The victims are held responsible for the money they have cashed.
There also are online sales scams in which a buyer sends a bad or fake check or money order for more than the cost of the item, asking the seller to send back their change.
Other online sales scams involve crooks who purport to be merchandise dealers. They are not, but they direct buyers to other websites that capture personal information such as credit card numbers.
“If you’re buying something online from a company that you’re not familiar with, do a little research on it,” DiMura said. “If someone’s been scammed, they’re going to write about it on one of those websites that talk about scams.”
Local police are also able to investigate fraud cases that happened outside of their jurisdiction.
“I’ve had some cases where they’re a Carroll County victim, but the crime is occurring across the country,” DiMura said. “If I can, I will give it to the state [in which the crime took place] and let them work it.”
Obviously, law enforcement authorities would rather have fewer of these cases to investigate. That is why they have made education a focal part of their efforts, speaking with community groups and senior centers about how to avoid becoming a victim of fraud.
Educating consumers becomes integral because law enforcement agencies cannot be everywhere, said John Breyault, director of the National Consumers League’s Fraud Center, which is based out of Washington, D.C.
“They’re constantly playing a game of Whack-A-Mole,” Breyault said. “You hit one and another pops up. They have to target their enforcement actions and try to be highly visible to scare away the fraudsters who will set up a scam for a few weeks or months and can just as easily shut it down, move away and start it up again. They do a good job of catching who they can and cracking down on it, recovering money that they can give back to victims.
“But the sad reality is that they only catch a very small fraction of the scam artists out there,” Breyault said. “Sometimes it seems like all the advantages appear to be with the scam artists. We do our best to try to expose these frauds when we find them, and just as importantly we educate consumers. Consumers are the first line of defense.”
