Let's take the usual discussion away from deadly force encouters and discuss ways to protect yourself from other attacks. The victim in this article made a couple errors. All in all it's a pretty scary story.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...79F206CDA350B36C8625712500544EF2?OpenDocument
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...79F206CDA350B36C8625712500544EF2?OpenDocument
Thief gets wallet, steals identity, toys with victim
By Peter Shinkle
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/02/2006
It looked like a routine identity theft, at first.
About a month after losing his wallet at a shopping mall in November, Steven B. Weiss discovered that someone was using his name to obtain credit cards.
But when Weiss tried to put a stop to it, the crime turned on him personally. Even as the FBI closed in, the apparent thief taunted and manipulated Weiss in a series of unnerving telephone calls that showed he even knew the name of Weiss' girlfriend.
"The guy has changed me forever," said Weiss, 40, who is the finance director for a car dealership in Creve Coeur. "I had home security put in my house. I'm sleeping with a gun next to my bed. I'm suspicious of everybody who calls."
The crime of identity theft is ballooning, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. But telephone calls or confrontations appear to be rare.
Weiss' nightmare ended Jan. 18, when the FBI arrested 22-year-old Mario D. Smith, a one-time track star at Parkway South High School who later had some disconcerting scrapes with the law.
He has past convictions for unlawful use of a weapon and disturbing the peace, and arrests for domestic assault, according to U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Ann Medler. She refused to set bail, deeming him a threat to public safety and a risk to flee.
Smith had been the subject of numerous warrants for failing to appear in court, according to documents filed in the Weiss case. When police interviewed him in August, they reported finding two .50-caliber guns in his car.
Furthermore, Smith had tried to board an airplane in 2004 in Los Angeles while wearing body armor, which he had claimed was "for protection," the judge wrote.
Smith has pleaded not guilty to a federal indictment alleging he committed aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud. If convicted, he will face up to 27 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000, although under sentencing guidelines, the penalties would be much less.
Smith could not be reached for comment. A public defender representing him declined to comment.
A lost wallet
The ordeal began Nov. 16 at Chesterfield Mall. Weiss reached into an outside jacket pocket for his wallet and found it gone. He figured someone had picked his pocket. Weiss notified his credit card companies, obtained replacement cards and hoped that would be the end of the problem.
It wasn't.
An FBI affidavit and interview with Weiss provide an account of the strange events that followed.
On Dec. 5 and 6, the credit companies mailed him even more cards. Weiss wasn't sure why. Then, as he left home Dec. 6, he found a letter, delivered by a parcel service, waiting inside the storm door of his house. He left it for later. But when he returned that night, it was gone.
The next night, he got calls from the fraud departments of Capital One and Chase, trying to confirm whether he used his cards to make ATM withdrawals. He said no.
The companies told Weiss that someone had added a name to his accounts. Weiss didn't know anything about the name. But whoever did it sure knew about Weiss. To make the addition, the caller had given the correct maiden name of Weiss' mother.
First contact
On Dec. 13, the Bank of America told Weiss that someone had applied for credit in his name. Weiss called the local phone number the applicant gave the bank. When a man answered, Weiss told him, "Whatever you are doing, you need to stop." The conversation ended abruptly.
Ten minutes later, someone called Weiss' office from the same number. The caller said "people" had found the wallet and mailed it to him in Florida. He urged Weiss to meet him there so they could retaliate together against the thieves.
Before hanging up, the man offered regards to Julie. That is the name of Weiss' girlfriend at the time, who lived with him in Eureka.
Weiss called the FBI. Special Agent Robert Tripp provided a phone recorder. The day after that, someone called Weiss and just laughed.
On Dec. 15, Weiss got the caller on tape, saying, "I don't think you understand how badly you --ed up. I mean really, people can get jobs, uh, commit crimes, uh, do anything."
The caller promised help if Weiss would work two hours at a charity.
"I will send my representatives to watch you, to make sure that you go help," the man said. "We don't want you to donate money, we want you to donate your time. Because you're a well-off man. I know you're well off. Your nice house shows it."
Something else the man said on the phone baffled Weiss: "So I came there, we met, shook your hand, looked in your eye, you smiled. . . . I just had to meet you. Had to get a profile on you."
Weiss said he was unaware of any such meeting.
"It was one of the oddest feelings I have ever had, when the guy said, 'I've looked you in the eye and shaken your hand,'" Weiss said. "You're dealing with somebody you can't see. It's an incredibly frightening and violating type of sensation."
'Make u a believer'
On Dec. 23, Weiss got a text message on his cell phone from the same local number as before. The message said, "My wife has been ill. I am staying at an hotel in eureka right now. i Will visit your job again at 5 pm 2day. Will you be there?"
Agent Tripp watched the car dealership but saw nothing notable.
Later that day, Weiss got another text message that implied the man knew police were involved. "I just came to your job and smelled bacon. U are trying 2 set me up. Because of this, i am angry. I stopped your id from being used and u do this to me? I will now have to make u a believer."
Then came one more: "I need 2 do sum christmas shopping. do u have a credit card I can use?"
The cat-and-mouse game was exasperating, Weiss said. When he put password protection on his new American Express card, the undeterred thief apparently closed the account and opened another in Weiss' name.
Weiss said he knows of about $2,000 worth of illicit purchases made with his identity. Court documents do not cite a loss total. The FBI affidavit said the thief tried, but failed, to buy about $6,000 worth of equipment to make magnetic stripe IDs - along with 500 blank cards.
Eventually, the FBI got a court order for a wiretap on the caller's line. But they were unable to determine the owner, because it was a pre-paid cell phone.
The FBI found it had been used in 177 calls to or from banks where Weiss had credit cards, and other businesses. Also included were calls to a credit reporting agency and to Intelius, a company that conducts computerized background checks for a fee. There was a call to the DHL delivery service on Dec. 7, the same day DHL shipped a new credit card to Weiss in the letter that disappeared from his door.
The FBI also discovered that when someone set up a new Bank of America account in Weiss' name Dec. 13, the applicant left behind a key piece of personal information about himself: an e-mail address, [email protected].
With help from Microsoft Corp., the FBI tracked the account to a computer at the home of Gus and Ruby Smith in the 4500 block of Fair Avenue in St. Louis. The FBI said that the Smiths' phone also was used for calls about one of the bogus Weiss credit cards.
Cell phone records showed that nearly half the mobile phone calls in the case went over two towers within range of the Fair address.
Attention was focused on a resident there, the Smiths' grandson, Mario D. Smith. In September, he had been arrested by St. Louis police for allegedly using a credit card stolen from someone other than Weiss to buy clothing, a car stereo and other items.
A police report said Smith admitted obtaining that victim's identity information from an acquaintance whose name had a familiar ring: It was a name that had been added to one of Weiss' accounts.
On Jan. 12, the FBI learned that someone had ordered an emergency replacement American Express credit card in Weiss' name to be delivered to a hotel in Eureka. By the time agents got there that day, the person had left the hotel - without the card.
A search - and a laugh
The next day, the FBI served a search warrant at the house on Fair Avenue and recovered Weiss' checkbook, drivers license and six credit cards in his name. Mario Smith denied ordering the cards.
Special Agent Tripp played one of the recorded calls and asked Smith why he made it. According to Tripp's court affidavit, Smith said he was just "teasing" Weiss and, laughing, added, "Come on, didn't you think that was funny?"
The FBI reported that Smith also said he did not attempt to visit Weiss at the car dealership on Dec. 23, and said he thought the text messages were also funny.
But for Weiss - who could only guess at what was meant by the phrase "make u a believer" - there was no humor. He said he did not know Smith.
Smith, who graduated from Parkway South in 2001, had entered Missouri Baptist University last fall on a track scholarship. The university said recently that he was no longer a student there.
Ruby Smith, his grandmother, said she doesn't know anything about an ID theft. "We worked for our living all these years," she emphasized.
Mario Smith wrote a letter to Judge Medler on Feb. 7, urging her to reconsider her order and release him pending trial. "I just ask that you see past some of the immature things I may have done," he wrote.
The judge said no.
[email protected] 314-621-5804
