Elginite says ID stolen, used in three other states

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Updated: March 18, 2012 8:10AM

Elgin

Defrauded cross-country: An Elgin man discovered this week that his credit card information was being used by thieves to charge things in New York, Missouri and Texas, and that somebody also seems to have a copy of his driver’s license. The man told police he received a call Wednesday afternoon from a security officer at Kennedy Airport in New York, asking if he were trying to charge airline tickets on the credit card. He told the officer he wasn’t, then checked his credit account online. According to police, it showed that on Feb. 9, someone had charged $730 in airline tickets to his account in Dallas. Then, Wednesday evening, a cellphone store clerk in Manchester, Mo., called him and asked if he could “return” to that store because she realized she had accidentally put the wrong SIM card in the phone she supposedly had just sold to him. When the Elginite said he had been nowhere near there that evening, the clerk said someone using a credit card with his number and an Illinois driver’s license with his name had just bought a cellphone. The clerk later called back and said a woman using a Georgia driver’s license had just come into the store and tried to buy a cellphone, then left in a car driven by the man who had been using the Elginite’s information.

Cannabis found: Security guards at the Buena Vista Apartments at 1200 Fleetwood Drive set off a second arrest in two days as they apprehended a man on drug charges Tuesday night. According to police reports, the guards stopped Marcus D. Wilder, 27, of Belvidere when they saw him coming out of one of the apartments and did not recognize him as a tenant. They said that after they asked whether he “had anything on” him, he raised his shirt and they saw a bag of marijuana stuffed into his beltline. Police said he also was found to have a marijuana cigar and a grinding machine shaped like part of a gun. Wilder was charged with possession of more than 2.5 grams of cannabis and possession of drug paraphernalia; he was released on $150 bond pending a March 9 hearing.

Huntley

Check scam: A resident who lives in the 12900 block of Tall Grass Drive became the latest victim of a regional scam in which people are sent checks, with instructions to cash the check and send a smaller amount of money to someone else in a distant location. The resident told Huntley police he or she sent the money to someone in California on Feb. 4 and then the check that had been sent to him bounced. Similar cases have been reported in Elgin and elsewhere in McHenry County, usually after the victim answers a help wanted ad.