The American Mall is dying. With the rise of online shopping and effects of an ongoing pandemic, malls have suffered what appears to be an irreversible decline. But in Chicago, while numbers of shoppers were decreasing, there was an uptick of retail theft cases. Investigations revealed though, that these were not thieves stealing for the need for the item being taken. These thieves were stealing to get United States identities.
Since August 2022, Chicago has seen an estimated 35,000 migrants flood the city after they illegally crossed the southern border in Texas, which bussed or flew them north. And it only takes a few bad men to take advantage of these migrant’s hopes for some part of the American dream. Investigators determined that three traffickers were dangling the promise of American identities and employment, for stolen merchandise.
Based on the tip from one of the retail thief’s, the sheriff’s deputies were able to set up an undercover operation in which they purchased phony IDs from the three bad men on multiple occasions. Which led to officers executing a search warrant for the residence and a crackdown of a stolen identity den. Officers recovered 481 fake identification cards, including social security cards, green cards, and driver’s licenses.
Great job by the Chicago Police Department.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Three Chicago Residents Accused of Scheming to Sell Fake IDs to Migrants, Arrested in Little Village, Chicago” published by Arlington Cardinal News on January 30, 2024
Three Chicago residents face felony charges following a Sheriff’s Police investigation of a scheme to sell fraudulent IDs to foreign nationals or migrants, who would then hope to use the fake IDs to gain employment, Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart announced Tuesday, January 30, 2024.
Cook County Sheriff’s Police arrested Facundo Donato Meneses-Garcia, age 51, Francisco Javier Otero-Rosas, age 42, and Keneth Jareth Ulloa-Rodriguez, 19, on January 24, 2024 after executing a search warrant at their residence in the block of 2700 South Hamlin Avenue in the Little Village Chicago. Officers, after entering the residence, recovered 481 fake identification cards – including social security cards, green cards, and driver’s licenses – along with more than $7,200 in cash and approximately 40 grams of suspected methamphetamine.
