GO TO REPORT ACTIVITY

First 2007 COPS meeting will be March 27 at 7pm.  Look forward to seeing you there!

 

See pictures from the April 10 - Identity Theft/Fraud Protection Seminar Identity Fraud: Resources

See pictures from our COPS Meeting on Tuesday, March 7^th, 2006 at 7:00 pm at the Winters Chapel United Methodist Church

"This is a Gwinnett County police program supported by our civic association. We have a network of Block Captains and Area Coordinators that is used as a communication vehicle for the neighborhood in addition to:"

• Bulletin Board
• eAlert Crime Watch Distribution List
• Block Captain and Area Coordinator information
• Crime prevention tips in the newsletters
• COPS meeting twice a year
• COPS Yearly Convention

Please advise all residents of Lockridge Forest and surrounding area of two Hispanic con-men offering to do work under the name Archie with Sunshine Remodeling. They seem to target the elderly requiring to be paid in cash before completing the job. Both men are neat in appearance and drive a green pickup truck. One even had his school age son with him. They offer a wide variety of jobs, this time it was pressure washing and sealing the house from dirt accumulation. In truth they were only using a car wash and wax!!

They try to befriend the elderly to gain their confidence.

If anyone sees these guys, please get car tag #.

The U.S. Postal Service is investigating a series of mail thefts in the Lockridge Forest area

By Bill Florence

For The Crier

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Gwinnett County police are investigating a mysterious two-month string of thefts involving reordered checks stolen from more than a dozen residents in and around the Lockridge Forest subdivision.

The mail thief, or thieves, have used the stolen checks, along with false Georgia drivers’ license information, to pass fraudulent checks totaling more than $30,000, primarily at Wal-Mart stores in Alabama and Mississippi, and at one or more casinos in Tunica, Mississippi.

Patti Higgins-Thomas, president of the Lockridge Forest civic association, said one of her neighbors had 21 stolen checks and had been victimized for more than $19,000.

Wachovia, Bank of America, SunTrust and Ironstone Bank were among the banks where the victims reordered checks. There is no evidence suggesting any of the banks or their employees had anything to do with the stolen checks.

Local and federal law enforcement officials assigned to the case cautioned their investigations were still at a preliminary stage, and no determination has been made as to how the boxes of reordered checks were stolen from the mail during last December and this January.

“Mail theft most often occurs after the mail is delivered and placed in mailboxes, not during processing at a post office,” said Inspector Yulanda Burns, a public information officer for the Postal Inspection Service. “In the Lockridge Forest cases, however, no determination has been made as to how the thefts occurred. We’re continuing to actively explore all leads to identify the source of the thefts.”

Burns said the thief or thieves who took the checks are guilty of a federal crime.

The Postal Inspection Service has seen a steady increase nationwide of mail theft, said Burns, along with the subsequent identity theft involved from thieves using the personal information obtained from stolen mail.

Higgins-Thomas, who was not a target of the thefts, and several victims strongly question whether the boxes of reordered checks were stolen from residents’ mailboxes.

“Lockridge Forest has a large percentage of retirees, stay-at-home parents, and residents who work from home, and no one noticed or reported any suspicious activity during the time when the checks were stolen,” said Higgins-Thomas.

James Dismuke, a Lockridge Forest resident, clearly remembers ordering checks in his wife’s name from SunTrust Bank sometime after last Thanksgiving.

When the checks never arrived at their home, Dismuke and his wife went to the bank, where SunTrust’s representatives checked the Dismuke’s account and discovered three bad checks had been written using checks from the missing box.

Two of the bad checks, totaling $474.19, had been written at two Wal-Mart stores located in Alabama and in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

The third check, in the amount of $400, had been cashed at Bally’s Casino Tunica, one of nine stationery boat casinos located in the northwest Mississippi River Delta city of Tunica.

The Dismukes immediately closed their SunTrust account upon discovering the falsified checks. The thief or thieves didn’t attempt to use any more of the Dismuke’s stolen checks, and SunTrust covered the fraudulent withdrawals from the Dismuke’s bank account.

Even though the Dismukes reported the stolen checks to SunTrust, and SunTrust held the couple harmless in the theft of the checks, Dismuke said he received harassing phone calls from collection agencies attempting to collect from the Dismukes for the bad checks accepted by the two Wal-Mart stores.

What bothers Dismuke the most, however, is that whoever stole the checks somehow acquired his Georgia driver’s license number, and used the number, with two digits reversed, to cash the checks, possibly in conjunction with a fake Georgia license.

The stolen checks, and subsequent identity theft, have drawn the attention of consumer advocate Clark Howard, who sent a crew to the Lockridge Forest neighborhood last week to interview theft victims.

Higgins-Thomas will host a meeting of all victims at her house on Monday, February 20, to share information on the cases and to discuss the status of the criminal investigations into the mail theft.

You can always dial 911 to report an emergency or call the non-emergency telephone numbers for the DeKalb and Gwinnett Police Departments to have a patrol car sent out.  For reference the non-emergency numbers are:

Be Alert

If you see suspicious activity or need to report an incident, first call the police.  Call either 911 for emergency or the police non emergency number listed below.  Then call your block captain.

 WHO TO CALL

Police Services

Emergency:	911
Non Emergency for Gwinnett County:	770-513-5122
Non Emergency for DeKalb County:	404-294-2000
Crime Prevention Unit - COPS Program:	770-623-2610

Police Information Hotlines

(If you have knowledge about the following crimes and wish to report):

Robbery Hotline:	770-513-5800
Drug Hotline:	770-962-6272

Animal Control

Gwinnett County:	770-339-3200
DeKalb County:	404-294-2996

Non Working Street Lights

Georgia Power (both counties):                              1-888-660-5890

DFACS

Gwinnett County:	770-995-2100
DeKalb County:	404-370-5066

To join the COPS program or if you have questions, please call Patti Higgins-Thomas at 770-828-0035 or Anne Galbraith at 770-396-4377.

"If you hear of anyone who has been a victim of crime, please have them report the incident to the police and let your Block Captain or Area Coordinator know about it."

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