ID-theft ring targets patients at medical office
A janitor at Northwestern University doctors' offices is accused of stealing the identities of 245 patients whose credit accounts were used to make $300,000 in fraudulent purchases.
The janitor and her two sisters are charged with being at the center of "one of the most blatantly organized identity-theft rings I've ever seen," said Tom Brady of the Postal Inspection Service. "It was like a job for them."
Seven people were arrested and charged Thursday, and another three Chicagoans were wanted, said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who announced the arrests.
Among the victims, a 65-year-old Des Plaines man discovered he'd been targeted when a $5,000 bill from a jewelry store turned up on his account. He soon found eight credit cards had been opened in his name at stores in the Orland Square Mall in Orland Park.
Another retiree in Glenview got a credit card in the mail - along with a statement for $5,700 already charged at a Schaumburg jewelry store.
Another Glenview man found that seven credit cards had been opened in his name in a month - with $3,420 charged to them.
"This is not something that is a victimless crime," Dart said, pointing out how difficult it sometimes is to have such fraudulent charges wiped away.
"Operation Quick Charge" was a five-month operation, conducted by the sheriff's police along with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and several police departments including Lake Zurich, Vernon Hills, Oak Brook, Glenview and Chicago. They uncovered a scam, apparently begun just over a year ago, that centered on a woman working for a janitorial service who was using the position to find personal information in the files of patients at Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation offices at the Galter Pavilion in Chicago.
"It was a rather simple plot, but very, very well thought out," Dart said.
Armed with information like Social Security numbers, they would either apply for new credit cards in that person's name, or simply call a credit-card company or store to have someone added to that person's account. They then typically made one or two purchases on the card or account, selling the goods to friends and family at reduced rates, then dumped it before being detected.
The ring was uncovered when so many victims intersected at the Northwestern medical offices - along with other computer detection, as their methods got sloppy, Dart said. "Some of this was so blatant," he said. Some of the criminals were even found posing with the goods on Facebook.
"The thing that is very, very frightening is how easily this was done," Dart added. While not calling the stores and credit-card companies complicit, he said in many cases their security was lax in the interest of completing sales. "It's wrong," he said. "It could have been mitigated a great deal."
Shikila Blount, 29, of the 600 block of East Woodland Park in Chicago, was arrested and charged with a Class X felony as the alleged organizer of a continuing financial criminal enterprise. Still wanted are Blount's sisters Laqueshia Holmes, 25, and Tijuana Leonard, 33, as well as Selina Hayes, 18, all of Chicago. Dart's office charged that Leonard was the employee with the Millard Group, a Lincolnwood janitorial service, who procured the personal information at the medical office.