Plano fire chief becomes victim in credit card theft ring
A suspected credit card thief is out on bond after being charged with stealing credit information and running a tab worth thousands of dollars. One of the victims was Plano's fire chief.
Police set up a sting and caught their suspect. Then they learned he may be part of a larger crime ring.
The fire chief says he would have never known his credit card had been compromised had his wife not gotten a call from a retailer in California who was trying to verify a charge for golf clubs he did not buy.
Sam Greif has years of experience as a Fort Worth firefighter and is now the fire chief in Plano. He backs the blue but never thought he'd need their help himself until his wife found $6,000 in fraudulent charges on their credit card.
"She calls me and says, 'Did you order some expensive golf clubs from California?' And I said, 'Absolutely not,’” he recalled.
Greif canceled his card and the order for golf clubs. But a different set of clubs was still delivered -- shipped from another store.
Greif was home when FedEx delivered and pulled the package inside and then called the police chief to ask what’s going on.
"The police chief said, 'You need to make a report on this,”” recalled Greif. “So I called the police 911 just like any other citizen would do and filed a report."
Detectives told him Greif this kind of scam happens in Plano and all over DFW. When Greif got a call from Neiman Marcus, trying to verify another fraudulent charge on a $1,800 for a purse, detectives let it go through and let it ship.
"What they didn't know was that PD was also here waiting on him to intercept it,” said Greif. “They were able to catch him red-handed."
Police say they caught Dayo Anisulowo with the package moments after delivery and found dozens of shipment tracking numbers to different addresses on his phone.
Plano Police say Anisulowo has been running this operation in cities like Sachse, McKinney and Dallas.
He's been arrested for fraud and theft and identity theft several times in Dallas, Collin and Denton County. And police have reason to believe he's associated with people engaging in organized crime.
"We believe this is going to be a large group, and they're doing large amounts of fraudulent activity,” said David Tilley with the Plano Police Department.
“Evidently, this wasn't his first time to do this,” said Greif. “But it also wasn't the first time for Plano PD to get their person either, so he came up against a better squad."
Police say there could be victims who had something shipped to their home and then stolen and might not know they are victims if they don't check their credit card statements.