Florida fraud victim tracks down suspect, calls police

Apr 15, 2022, 10:58 AM | Updated: 12:04 pm

STUART, Fla. (AP) — When a Florida woman noticed fraudulent activity on her bank account, she began investigating on her own, and was able to track him to a gas station. Then she called police.

The woman first noticed the charges on Wednesday coming from a WaWa gas station, Stuart police said in a Facebook post.

She was able to find out that a man driving a white work truck had made the charges, police said. They didn’t say how she got this information.

The woman thought that perhaps the man was a creature of habit and would return to the scene of the crime. So she went to the gas station on Thursday and waited. A white work truck pulled up and began pumping gas, police said.

She saw the man toss credit cards in the trash and at the same time was receiving fraudulent alerts from her bank.

That’s when she called 911.

A Stuart police sergeant came to the gas station and talked to the man, who is from Fort Lauderdale.

Detectives later found multiple steel tanks in the back of the truck as well as other tanks hidden in the bed of the truck, the report said. They also found 28 fraudulent credit and debit cards in the truck.

The man was arrested and charged with trafficking in or possessing counterfeit credit cards, unlawful conveyance of fuel, obtaining fuel by fraud, fraudulent use of a credit card more than two times within six months, and unlawful possession of a personal ID of five or more persons.

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Florida fraud victim tracks down suspect, calls police