Credit Card

An Anaheim woman is out on bail after being arrested earlier this week on suspicion of stealing an Irvine woman's credit card and buying designer handbags. Judy Nguyen, 28, was booked on suspicion of identity theft and grand theft and unauthorized use of a credit card Tuesday after police found her waiting outside an Irvine woman's home, allegedly to pick up an item she had illegally ordered online. Police said her victim didn't know her card had been compromised until the credit card company called her telling her that a purchase for a $2,700 Louis Vuitton bag was rejected.

Law enforcement authorities believe a Costa Mesa bar owner and member of the 1980s punk band M.I.A., found dead last week, slipped and fell in an icy motel parking lot in suburban Chicago after a woman he had been “partying with” took his cell phone and credit card, a Cook County Sheriff’s Department official said Monday. Sheriff’s deputies arrested Adrienne Kastaneda, 34, Friday after the woman tried to use the credit card of Avalon Bar owner and musician Michael Conley to make a small purchase at a store near her home in Leyden Township, an unincorporated area about 35 minutes west of downtown Chicago, said Penny Mateck, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department.

This corrects an earlier version of the story. Detectives have identified 10 more credit card fraud victims of a Newport Beach man who is accused of using his web-related job to collect financial information from more than 800 people, authorities said. Police have found 13 victims so far, out of more than 800 who allegedly had their credit card numbers stolen by Trevor Hammonds, 46, of Newport Beach, Sgt. Evan Sailor said. Hammonds created the Catalina Conservancy Divers website in 2005 and saved the credit card numbers of people who used the site to donate to the group through 2006, Sailor said.

It may not be as classy a ride as he’s used to, but Newport Beach police think the back of a squad car suits one Newport Beach man just fine. Police on Thursday arrested a local limo business owner they say defrauded hundreds of customers out of thousands of dollars through unauthorized credit card charges. Police said Hamid Derakhshi, 45, would make unauthorized charges ranging from $900 to $1,500 on people’s credit cards a few days after they used his limousine service, “A Classy Ride.

When I was 15, my mother did something so remarkably simple to help me establish my credit that I wondered why it has not been done before. All she did was list me on the family checking account. Fortunately for me, my parents paid their bills on time. So when I applied for my first credit card at age 24, I got approved. That card was a Mobil Oil card. Getting cards was easy. Paying some of them off was not. In a short period of time, I had a lot of credit cards.

Program offers gun locks Wednesday Members of a nonprofit organization will distribute free gun locks outside the Newport Beach Police Department from noon to 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Project ChildSafe is a nationwide program that promotes safe firearms handling and storage practices through the distribution of key safety-education messages and free gun-locking devices. The group is providing the free locks thanks to a federal grant. For more information about the program, visit www.projectchildsafe.

Of the events and actions that can adversely affect family life, first or second is credit card debt. When not properly used, credit cards can sap thousands of dollars from family funds over just a few years; money that could be used for college savings, family vacations or the purchase of a better home. That wasted money comes not from the use of the card, but the failure to pay off the balance each month. The subject of credit cards hit home recently as three events came together in one week.

-- Greg Risling Costa Mesa police are looking for a man they say nearly ran down a police officer in South Coast Plaza after he allegedly attempted to use a stolen credit card. Police said the man managed to avoid hitting the officer while erratically driving his car in the shopping center. The incident occurred around 4:30 p.m. when officers responded to a call by South Coast Plaza security about a potential credit card fraud at Macy's department store.

A $1-million warrant has been issued for a Tustin man who punched a Costa Mesa police officer in 2006 and tricked authorities earlier this week to escape during his trial. Police are looking for Mark Thomas Georgantas, 46, who is proving to be a slippery one for Orange County Sheriff’s deputies. Georgantas was on trial at Santa Ana’s Central Justice Center Wednesday for credit card fraud and grand theft when he told the court he had to use the restroom. He was free on $50,000 bail, court records show.

An Irvine man is scheduled to surrender himself to police Nov. 12 and serve a year in jail for his role in a credit card forgery ring, Orange County prosecutors said. Jerome Abaquin Gonzales, 33, pleaded guilty in Orange County Superior Court Sept. 10 to felony counts of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and trafficking and possessing access card materials. The credit card information came from a data breach in a Florida supermarket chain between December 2007 and March 2008 where 4.2 million Discover Card accounts were compromised, the largest such breach in the nation's history.

An Anaheim woman is out on bail after being arrested earlier this week on suspicion of stealing an Irvine woman's credit card and buying designer handbags. Judy Nguyen, 28, was booked on suspicion of identity theft and grand theft and unauthorized use of a credit card Tuesday after police found her waiting outside an Irvine woman's home, allegedly to pick up an item she had illegally ordered online. Police said her victim didn't know her card had been compromised until the credit card company called her telling her that a purchase for a $2,700 Louis Vuitton bag was rejected.

A Costa Mesa man was convicted of identity theft and other federal offenses in a credit card scheme targeting Vietnamese people, authorities said Monday. Hung Van Tieu, 62, was convicted of two counts of credit card fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy after a three-day trial last week, according to a news release from the Department of Justice. Authorities said Tieu would call credit cards impersonating the cardholder and request a new card be sent to the cardholder's home.

A 36-year-old man convicted of embezzling more than $1.9 million from an Irvine-based architecture firm is scheduled to appear for sentencing Friday. Salvatory Josef Fulwider of Yorba Linda pled guilty to 48 felonies, including grand theft, making false entries in records or returns, and acts constituting forgery with sentencing enhancement for damages exceeding $100,000, fraud or embezzlement exceeding $500,000 and theft exceeding $150,000, court records show. Fulwider was the financial controller for McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners Inc., between November 2003 and March 2009, and was responsible for corporate finances as well as the personal finances of one of the company's owners, according to a February 2010 news release from the Orange County district attorney's office.

A Costa Mesa man is set to be arraigned Thursday on charges that he stole more than $280,000 from an elderly Newport Beach woman suffering from dementia. Newport Beach police arrested John Thomas Windsor, 41, on Wednesday. Authorities charged him with felony residential burglary, caretaker theft of an elder, fraudulently using an access card and three counts of forgery — all with sentencing enhancements tacked on alleging it was a white collar crime with more than $200,000 stolen.

A Costa Mesa woman accused of being the mastermind of an identity theft ring, and who was out on bail, has been charged with stealing more identities while awaiting trial on the first case, prosecutors announced Thursday. Georgia Lichia Su, 41, is charged with multiple felony counts of forgery, commercial burglary, identity theft, and using fictitious instruments. Prosecutors added a possible sentencing enhancement for allegedly committing the crimes while out on bail for a similar, 2010 case.

I've been looking through the expense reports of Costa Mesa Police Chief Christopher Shawkey and Capt. Ron Smith, searching for clues as to why they were unexpectedly put on administrative leave in November. After poring through more than 200 pages of public documents, I didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see a potential problem: Shawkey had bought hundreds of gallons of gasoline on a city-issued credit card in places far from his Costa Mesa post. For instance, during a nine-day period last summer, Shawkey used taxpayer money to purchase more than 161 gallons of gas that included stations in the California desert, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming.

A financial bookkeeper for a Newport Beach architectural firm accused of siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars from her company for personal expenses pleaded not guilty Thursday. Suzanne Denise Baumann, 40, of Anaheim Hills, pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of grand theft second-degree burglary and identity theft from the Central Jail in Santa Ana. She faces up to six years and four months in prison if convicted on all charges. Police said as the financial bookkeeper, who worked at Scheurer Architects in Newport Beach since 1996, Baumann used her role to quietly buy $115,700 worth of personal items on company credit cards.

Newport Beach police have announced an arrest in a credit card fraud case that was made two months ago in Fashion Island. A man, 24, of Alhambra, was arrested Aug. 12 at Bloomingdale's after buying $2,262 worth of women's makeup, said Sgt. Steve Burdette of the Newport Beach Police Department. Store security, which had been working with Newport Beach economic crime detectives, recognized the man and called police. Officers arrived and arrested the man as he left the store.

An Irvine man is scheduled to surrender himself to police Nov. 12 and serve a year in jail for his role in a credit card forgery ring, Orange County prosecutors said. Jerome Abaquin Gonzales, 33, pleaded guilty in Orange County Superior Court Sept. 10 to felony counts of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and trafficking and possessing access card materials. The credit card information came from a data breach in a Florida supermarket chain between December 2007 and March 2008 where 4.2 million Discover Card accounts were compromised, the largest such breach in the nation's history.