Stealing from the wrong person

[IzzyEng4 427]

This is about my good friend Melissa about her credit card information being stolen. I remember the day she told us on the day it happend. -- Joe

Reprinted from the Hartford Courant.

Computer Swindle Preyed On Prosecutor

September 29, 2006

By TRACY GORDON FOX, Courant Staff Writer

Raymond Clifford Dugan apparently picked the wrong victim.

When police say Dugan used a state Department of Labor public computer to hack into a carpet store's on-line records, he did not know the credit card information he obtained belonged to Melissa Streeto Brechlin, a prosecutor with the chief state's attorney's office.

"It's a cautionary tale, and it's comical it happened to someone who upholds the law for a living," Brechlin said Thursday, after Dugan was charged with attempted larceny and computer crimes. "My husband said, `this guy messed with the wrong person.' I said, `yes he did.'"

Dugan, of Newington, who tried to conceal his identity using a public computer station, was tracked down by detectives from the Department of Public Safety's newly formed computer crime unit.

Dugan, 40, who was recently incarcerated on an unrelated case, was charged with first-degree computer crime, illegal use of a credit card, identity theft, criminal attempt to commit third-degree larceny and third-degree larceny, police said. He is also suspected of defrauding numerous other customers of Galaxy Discount Carpet in Newington, where he used to work, police said. He was being held with bail set at $100,000 and is scheduled to appear in Superior Court in New Britain on Oct. 10.

Brechlin had made an on-line purchase from Galaxy Carpet at the end of July. Brechlin said she just happened to check her bank account at the end of August, and noticed $1,100 was missing.

She called the bank, and it said the charges, which had not yet been approved, were for online gift cards, including $500 for Nordstrom, $500 for Macy's, and the rest to another on-line store.

According to the bank, the money had not been spent. But Brechlin informed the bank that it was still attempted larceny, and that she wanted to get to the bottom of it. She called Nordstrom's and Macy's, and they gave her the e-mail address of the person who purchased the on-line gift cards.

Brechlin typed in the e-mail and Internet provider address, and was shocked to find they were registered to the state.

"That just blew my mind," Brechlin said. "I'm an employee and I'm thinking another employee is ripping me off. I was just horrified."

She fired off an e-mail to the Department of Information Technology, which oversees state computers, saying that someone using a state computer was attempting to steal from her bank account. Technicians there determined the computer was one of the labor department's public computers in Hartford or Wethersfield. The computers are there for the public to look for jobs on-line.

Employees at information technology passed on the information to troopers, who traced the purchases back to Dugan. Nancy Steffens, a spokeswoman for the labor department, said it does not block many Internet sites, and must allow access to retail sites so people can find jobs. She said the department of labor was quickly able to help state police learn who used the computer.

It turns out that Dugan had worked at Galaxy Discount Carpet as its computer systems administrator, and knew how to access the server by remote. He quit awhile ago, but continued to secretly access the customer credit card information and use it "to make unauthorized Internet purchases," police said.

A manager at the store described Dugan as a "computer genius." She said they have had to rebuild the store's entire website, at a cost of more than $12,000.

Brechlin said she hopes the labor department will put more security measures on its public computers. In the meantime, she said, she is a lot more careful where she uses her credit card.

"I see those [identity theft] commercials now, and I think, that's me."

Contact Tracy Gordon Fox at tfox@courant.com.

[JM15 386]

I just gave a presentation on Identity theft yesterday in one of my classes. You have to be very careful with your credit card information these days, thieves can steal that stuff so easily