Police warn of ongoing scheme

Honolulu police and the city prosecutor are warning of a credit card scheme using personal information of Hawaii residents that may be large in scope locally.

“Citizens should start checking because of numerous breaches of confidential data,” city Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro urged at a news conference Friday. “We may be seeing a lot more of these credit card cases.”

He said the sooner the fraudulent transactions are detected the more likely suspects will be caught.

Multiple crews from the mainland are in Hawaii with counterfeit credit cards using local residents’ personal information taken from data breaches from last year.

Kaneshiro emphasized that the scheme is unique in that the crews are using counterfeit cards with information stolen from local residents so they can go undetected — card companies do not alert the customers since the charges are local.

In the most recent cases, suspects are from the East Coast, Kaneshiro said.

He said New York City has extradited suspects to Hawaii. On Friday afternoon, prosecutors charged Dwight Alexandre, a 32year-old Rosedale, N.Y., man with fraudulent use of a credit card, unauthorized possession of personal confidential information and second-degree theft. His bail was set at $100,000.

Police Lt. John McCarthy said the fraudulent credit card purchases stem from various data breaches.

He said there are multiple victims, and they typically hit vendors selling high-end merchandise that is easy to sell and then take it back with them to the mainland.

McCarthy said if residents see charges on their credit card statements they don’t recognize, they ought to call police first.

“We’re able to track it live at a particular store,” he said. “Next thing we do is call your credit card companies.”