An organized crime group using homeless and unemployed people to make fraudulent withdrawals using stolen bank information has been implicated in a theft from a bank in McCandless.
McCandless police filed charges Monday against Tyler Joseph Frank, 42. He was not in custody as of Tuesday, and a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
According to a criminal complaint, a Hopewell man reported to McCandless police on Oct. 29 that he discovered an unknown person had withdrawn $900 from his account at S&T Bank in McCandless.
The man told police he was not in the country when the withdrawal was made. The bank reviewed video of the transaction and confirmed it was not him, the complaint states.
An S&T manager told police that a man, later identified as Frank, was at the S&T branch Oct. 9 in Monroeville, where he asked for a printout of the Hopewell man’s account, which provides the account number. Frank provided photo identification with the Hopewell man’s name and verified his identity with his full Social Security number, according to the complaint.
Later in the day Oct. 9, Frank went to the McCandless S&T branch, where he made the $900 withdrawal.
When McCandless police were working on identifying Frank, they were contacted Oct. 29 by police in Ellwood City, who identified Frank and said they had prior encounters with him there, according to the complaint.
Frank’s former girlfriend in Ellwood City told police he had texted her claiming to have come into “all kinds of money,” sent her photos of himself posing with large sums of cash and said he soon would have more, the complaint states.
The woman told police it was odd because Frank has no job and was homeless, according to the complaint.
Police in Ohio Township and Harrisburg also reported identifying Frank using facial recognition software, the complaint states.
A U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigator looking into organized-crime bank fraud groups also identified Frank.
According to the complaint, the groups use homeless and unemployed people, dressing them in nice clothes and sending them into banks with fraudulent identities to cash “washed” checks (stolen and altered checks) or to make withdrawals using stolen bank information. The group then pays the homeless or unemployed person for doing this.
TribLive was seeking additional comment from a representative of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
McCandless police charged Frank with felony identity theft and a misdemeanor count of theft by deception.
Source: triblive.com
