Lowe’s workers eyed in identity theft probe Daphne police suspect them of stealing shopper’s ID
Lowe’s workers eyed in identity theft probe Daphne police suspect them of stealing shopper’s ID
DAPHNE — Two employees of Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse in Eastern Shore Park may have worked together to steal a shopper’s identity last month, Daphne police said Thursday.
On Oct. 16, officers arrested store employee Eurika Baker, 19, of Mobile, on a misdemeanor theft of property charge, said police Lt. Jud Beedy. He said Baker had made a purchase with credit card information belonging to Baldwin County special education teacher Brenda Breedlove, who had recently shopped at the store.
Police have reviewed store surveillance tapes that show Breedlove’s credit card information may have been stolen at a checkout line attended by another employee, Beedy said. Both employees are subjects of an identity theft investigation, he said.
Efforts to contact local and national Lowe’s officials were unsuccessful Thursday.
Breedlove said the experience has frightened her.
“If there’s more than one person involved, we certainly need to dig deeper and see how far it goes,” Breedlove said.
Breedlove said Lowe’s has refunded the invalid charges on her Lowe’s credit card, which amounted to about $240.
But she said she is concerned that someone may have gleaned personal information from the card, then sold it or used it to acquire more credit cards. She said she has ordered a credit report.
Beedy said that investigators are looking for any possible additional criminal activity in the case.
Baker was charged with third-degree theft of property, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.
Illegal possession or fraudulent use of a credit card is a class C felony in Alabama that carries a sentence of one to 10 years in the penitentiary.
Baker was charged with the misdemeanor based on evidence that police had at the time, Beedy said, but a felony investigation was also opened.
The Federal Trade Commission has reported that one in 12 Americans become victims of identity theft annually. Credit card companies often help victims, who still are faced with the time-consuming task of clearing their own names.
A Gartner Inc. survey of consumer victims this year found an average loss of about $3,300.
Identity theft cost U.S. businesses and consumers an estimated $49.3 billion in 2006, according to a new study by Javelin Strategy & Research Inc. That’s down from a 2003 Federal Trade Commission estimate of $53 billion.