Smile! You’re On Stupid Payment Thief Camera

One of the challenges for payment card security professionals is that, very often, these thieves are professionals who are highly trained, have substantial operating budgets and are very intelligent. This is not a story about one of them. This is a story about a woman who went to a Walmart, stole a 74-year-old woman’s wallet while she was shopping at Walmart and proceeded to run up charges on various of her payment cards. And when a suspicious cashier asked if the thief would pose for a picture with her holding up the stolen American Express card, she agreed. Bonus: The photo also showed the woman holding the stolen wallet.

This all happened this summer in Florida (OK, most of you already guessed that) and began when the victim reported to police that her wallet and cards—an American Express Macy’s card and a Sam’s Club payment card—had been stolen and that hundreds of dollars in bogus charges appeared on her statement. The largest single charge was for $404.68 at the Looking Good Beauty Supply store so Officer Andrew Ritz began his investigation.

When the clerk was questioned about the transaction from a month earlier, the police report said, the cashier “immediately knew which transaction I was talking about.” Seems that the suspect couldn’t produce a state ID, but she did produce an ID-sized photo of herself, with the victim’s name printed on it. The cashier was suspicious so she asked the suspect if she would be willing to pose with her payment card, so the cashier could take a picture. She agreed.

“I thought that would scare her into saying I don’t want this anymore, but she smiled for it,” the cashier told a local television news reporter. As The Smoking Gun put it: “Because, who in their right mind would agree to such an image if they were engaging in felony credit card fraud, right?”

Ocala Police have tentatively identified the suspect, but have not yet released her name as the investigation is continuing, according to Ocala Police Public Information Officer Angie Scroble.
In all fairness, the photo may not have been necessary given the plethora of security video cameras around the stores where the bogus card charges happened, but a far-off security camera doesn’t have the same impact as the suspect smiling as she holds both the stolen card and the stolen wallet.

For the suspect’s intelligence and reputation, this could have been worse. It could have been a selfie.