On a Saturday morning at home in Wahiawa, Leroy Chincio and his two young daughters had just finished breakfast when the doorbell rang.
A police officer had come to arrest him — even though he had broken no law.
Chincio was shocked. His daughters, then 4 and 6, were frightened.
The 2009 incident marked the beginning of a case of identity theft that has since cost the Hawaiian Electric Co. senior construction manager hundreds of dollars and countless hours of lost work time. It also has tarnished his credit and driving records and exposed a loophole in Hawaii’s traffic citation system.
More than two years later, Chincio, 44, still is trying to undo the damage.
"I got caught in a bureaucratic nightmare," he said. "It could happen to anybody."
The nightmare started when someone claiming to be Chincio got stopped for a series of traffic infractions, including speeding and expired vehicle safety stickers, in 2008 and 2009. Though the tickets were issued in his name, Chincio said he never received them or the subsequent paperwork about unpaid fines because the driver had provided a different Wahiawa address from his.
Long after he got over the shock of having an officer show up with an arrest warrant, Chincio learned who the alleged impersonator was: his own younger brother.
During the traffic stops, the brother would tell the officers that he had forgotten his license at home, then would give them Chincio’s name and other identifying information, including his birth date, Chincio said.
By the time the officer showed up on his doorstep, the unpaid fines totaled more than $1,200. Chincio said he had no clue the tickets had been issued.
Chincio’s experience exposes what police and prosecutors acknowledge is a gap in the system.
People who say they have forgotten their licenses at traffic stops sometimes will claim to be someone else, and if they know certain information, such as a Social Security number or a birth date, they might be able to initially pull off the ruse, triggering a bureaucratic mess for the unsuspecting victim.
"Identity theft is a serious crime," Maj. Kurt Kendro, commander of the Honolulu Police Department’s Traffic Division, said in a written statement to the Star-Advertiser. "While this particular form isn’t common, it does happen and should be reported so that it can be properly investigated."
Criminal defense attorney Paul Cunney said his office usually gets two to three identity theft cases a year involving traffic infractions, and they often involve brothers.
Police have the authority to cite and even arrest a driver who fails to show a license during a traffic stop, Cunney said. But officers frequently will let the driver off the hook if they can verify that a valid license under the person’s name exists, he added, noting the driver usually will be cited for other violations anyway.
Chincio wasn’t arrested when the officer came to his home in 2009. He was able to convince the officer that he wasn’t the driver responsible for the tickets.
After paying the $1,200-plus in fines so he could get court dates to challenge the charges, Chincio was able to persuade three different judges — the tickets were issued in three districts on Oahu — to drop the charges. In several instances, Chincio said he was able to produce airline records showing he wasn’t even on Oahu at the time of the traffic infractions.
The court reimbursed him for the $1,200.
Chincio said he discovered who the impersonator was when Chincio’s wife noticed that a license plate number listed on one of the citations matched the number on a car driven by his 42-year-old sibling.
The HECO manager said he confronted his brother, who admitted impersonating Chincio, apologized and promised not to do it again. Before then the two had a good relationship, Chincio said. But after that "I wanted to give him some lickings," he added. Chincio said he refrained in order to appease their mother.
Phone calls to a residence where Chincio said his brother lived were not returned.
While Chincio refrained from getting physical, he did report his brother to authorities. When police questioned the man, though, he denied using Chincio’s identity, according to Chincio. Police, prosecutors and the state attorney general’s office told Chincio the evidence was insufficient to prosecute, he added.
Chincio’s nightmare didn’t end there.
When he tried to renew his driver’s license in November, the agency that handles such transactions told him he had unpaid default judgments for more traffic tickets.
Chincio said he wasn’t aware of those tickets, which weren’t part of the batch previously dismissed. A default judgment is issued when a defendant fails to show up in court.
Because Chincio must drive daily for his HECO job, he couldn’t wait months for a court date to contest the charges, so he paid $505 to a collection agency to cover the judgments and fees, believing he could go before a judge later to clear his name.
But court personnel subsequently told him that by paying the judgments, he essentially admitted guilt, eliminating the option of contesting the charges, according to Chincio.
A Judiciary spokeswoman said that under exceptional circumstances a court could consider a motion to set aside a default judgment and grant appropriate relief.
If Chincio can’t get the judgments reversed, he isn’t out just the $505. His credit history also has been tainted because of the collection agency action, and his driving record still shows the underlying 2009 infractions of speeding, expired safety checks and not possessing a driver’s license.
And that’s not all.
Chincio said he went to multiple agencies and even his neighborhood board to ask what he could do prevent this from happening again, and no one offered a solution. One person advised him to hire an attorney to sue his brother, but Chincio sees that as only costing him more money.
One thing he did do, though, was make some "fraud alert" fliers with his brother’s picture, a list of the cars he usually drives and details about the alleged identity thefts. Chincio delivered the fliers to the Wahiawa, Waianae and Pearl City police stations, asking that they be distributed to patrol officers.
Cunney, the defense attorney, said Chincio has "a tough row to hoe" to clear his name of the paid default judgments.
The whole ordeal has frustrated Chincio, who said he now stops at the courts on a regular basis to ensure no new tickets have been issued under his name.
"There’s got to be a better way," he lamented.
