A massive Staten Island-based ID theft ring ripped off more than $5 million from about 200 people, including 20 Fort Hood soldiers, said authorities who conducted raids Tuesday in Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn.
The suspects, most of whom are Nigerian immigrants on Staten Island, stole mail to get social security numbers and other information they used to open bank accounts and credit cards over a period of five years, authorities said today.
“It takes a certain detached cruelty to victimize people in this way,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, calling the 26 defendants “despicable individuals.”
Military personnel were targeted because some were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and would be slower to discover cash missing from their bank accounts, officials said.
All of the soldiers were hit after last November’s Fort Hood massacre and none were victims of the rampage.
Kelly said a military insider may have helped the suspects defraud soldiers.
The alleged thieves “led a simple, frugal existence,” working low-wage jobs and mostly sending the cash they swindled home to Africa, said Detective Robert Fitzgibbons.
They used mail drop boxes to collect the checks and a system of runners and underlings to thwart authorities, Staten Island DA Daniel Donovan said.
The intricate scheme reached into Westchester County, Atlanta, Philadelphia and even Lagos, Nigeria, where many of the suspects hail from, officials said.
NYPD wiretapped 10 homes and recorded thousands of hours worth of conversations involving the individuals, as part of “Operation Hydra.”
In Staten Island, 60 residents and 27 banks were defrauded, officials said.