By Amy Buckman
November 3, 2006 - Police in Upper Darby are holding a man on 7 counts of theft, deception and forgery. But detectives are continuing their investigation into the suspect because they have a lot of questions about the case... including whether the alleged thief might be a terrorist.
On Wednesday afternoon, workers at the Commerce Bank on Garrett Road called Upper Darby police. They were suspicious about a customer. He'd withdrawn 87-hundred dollars cash that morning and had come back to take another 97-hundred dollars out of the same account. The man had a New Jersey driver license, credit cards, and what appears to be a doctored Pakistani passport.
It looked as if new pages have been glued into the cover. He also had what police say is a fake social security card. All were in the name of Shahid Batti. But the man in the bank didn't look like the man on the documents.
When detectives began questioning the suspect, they found more pieces that just didn't add up. The recently opened bank account was in the name of the Batti Trading Company, but the address for that company is an empty storefront in the 64-hundred block of Market Street.
Finally, the suspect admitted he wasn't Batti. He told them he was Raza Hussain of Brooklyn, New York and he gave them his birth date - January 1, 1962. As a routine matter, they ran that information through the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. The name didn't come up, but the birth date did as belonging to a man on the Terrorist Watch List.....
Police: Identity Theft Ring Disrupted (IL - 11/3/06)
JOLIET, Ill. (AP) -- Ten hotel workers were arrested Thursday in what police said was an identity theft ring that involved thousands of stolen credit card numbers nationwide.
The four-month investigation netted more than 150 stolen credit cards used by visitors to book rooms in Joliet and Romeoville, both near Chicago, authorities said.
The ring involved workers, managers and at least three owners at two Holiday Inn Express franchises, three Super 8s, a Ramada and a Budget Inn, police said.
Police said they believe their informant, who faces unrelated charges, bought more than 10,000 credit card numbers used by hotel guests in the Joliet area over the past six years.......