A Philadelphia man was arrested last week for the second time this summer for fraudulently obtaining credit card information from a victim and using the phony card to make several large purchases.
Last Friday, an Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) officer fielded a complaint from a potential fraud victim who told police her credit card had been used several times at different locations in Ocean City over the previous two days. The victim told police she was still in possession of the credit card and she had not been in Ocean City for two years.
The victim sent the officer a screen shot of her bank statement showing all of the charges made on it in Ocean City including various bars and restaurants, twice at an amusement park, at a liquor store and a discount store. The largest single transaction was $221 while the smallest was $71.
The OCPD officer went to the liquor store where one of the fraudulent charges occurred and met with the store manager. The manager was able to pull up video footage of the time of the transaction and matched up the last four digits of the victim’s card. The video showed the suspect purchasing two bottles of liquor using the credit card with the same last four digits as the card belonging to the victim.
In March 2019, Kofa had been arrested in Georgia and was found in possession of a credit card reader, or skimming, device. The device allows one to use a computer program to read, erase, rewrite or encode financial card information onto magnetic strips on credit cards, gift cards or any other card that has a magnetic strip.
Around 1:25 AM, on Sunday, an officer observed Kofa driving the Ford Taurus on Baltimore Avenue. The officer initiated a traffic stop and a search of the vehicle revealed over 100 blank credit, debit and gift cards, some of which had Kofa’s name on them. The search also revealed a credit card reader-writer encoder machine… The Dispatch