Brentwood Residents Targets of Identity Theft

Spending $1,500 in Santiago might have been part of a nice vacation for Yvonne Delgado. Unfortunately, she didn't place the charges on her account.

The 59-year-old Brentwood resident received a call from her bank, , last week to ask if she was making a large purchase in Santiago. Delgado was at her home in Brentwood, so the bank canceled her charges and her card. She was the victim of identity theft, and she's not the only Brentwood resident affected.

"It started on Saturday morning, a girlfriend put something up on Facebook," Delgado said. Her friend was scammed for $1,000, she said.

Later, her son Todd tried to use a debit card to buy breakfast, but was rejected after account activity showed up in Michigan. Other friends and family who live in or frequently visit Brentwood—eight total—were hit, she said.

Delgado said everyone is puzzled by the incident. All charges were canceled by the banks before any money was stolen, but she wonders what happened.

No one has filed a report with the , said Maj. Dan Fitzgerald, assistant police chief. This indicates that every fraudulent charge on Brentwood account holders was likely canceled before any damage was done.

Fitzgerald said he hasn't seen widespread fraud like this in Brentwood before.

"It happens every once in a while, but not on this scale," he said.

He offered two quick tips to help people battle identity theft:

• Use protected sites when shopping online.
• Dispose of every credit card receipt when you're finished with it.

But he warned that sometimes being careful isn't enough, because identity thieves are getting smarter.

"Even when people do what they should be doing, it sometimes doesn't matter," Fitzgerald said.

Delgado and her friends are still trying to figure out how they became victims. When she went to replace her card at West Community Credit Union, she waited in a long line.

"And there's never a line," she said. She said a lot of people were replacing their cards.

Calls to West Community Credit Union were not immediately returned.