Cabrini ID thief caught

Ian Dahlgren

During the week of Aug. 31, 2003, the postal authorities arrested the man that they believe is the mastermind behind 74 cases of identity theft associated with Cabrini.

Charlie Schaffner, director of public safety, said, “the former contract employee had gotten his hands on some information and has slowly used that for about a year.” A contract employee is someone hired outside of the college. “He was an employee here between 2000-2001,” Schaffner said. The man is believed to have compiled and selectively picked a number of people whose identities were stolen, selling them off over a long period of time.

Identity fraud has affected 74 students, faculty, staff and alumni associated with the college, according to Schaffner. Over 30 reports were on file. “Unfortunately, it’s a difficult crime to track down. The postal authorities did several different raids to locate the individual,” Schaffner said.

According to Schaffner, those involved in the crime kept changing the address of the destination of the mail changes. There were six different addresses given in north Philadelphia between 26th Street and Marsden Street.

The crime has involved a number of local police departments including Radnor Township, Upper South Hampton, and the state police in New Jersey. They are speculating that the man responsible for the fraud has been selling the addresses to other people because of the way they tracked the crime back to him.

“They did a control delivery of the merchandise that was purchased on an identity theft credit card and the postal authorities got wind of it with the people delivering the appliance. They found out who the appliance went to and arrested her. She, in turn, gave them another name and they arrested her and she, in turn, gave them the name of the individual who was responsible for that and they recovered all the information. It’s an incredible sequence of events,” Schaffner said.

For further information regarding the identity fraud crisis on-campus, look for an in-depth report to be featured in Issue 4 of The Loquitur.