Eight charged with identify-fraud home-equity scheme

Eight people in the Boston area are charged with an identity-theft scheme that prosecutors say let them steal $700,000 from five victim's home-equity lines.

Members of the fraud ring managed to get the victims' phone lines redirected to their own, which they then used to obtain advances on the victims' home-equity lines and have them transferred to their own bank accounts between November 2012 and Feburary, 2013, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office.

Key to the scheme was the alleged perpetrators' ability to answer personal security questions when talking to the phone companies about re-routing the phone lines, the DA's office says. Exactly how they gained that information remains unclear, a spokesman says:

The person(s) who got and misused this personal information remain(s) unknown. As to how he/she/they got the info, that's also unclear. Could be a person known to the victim, could be some kind of data breach, could be some other method.

The DA's office continues:

In each instance, a co-conspirator contacted the victim's home phone service provider and properly answered security questions in order to pose as the account holder and have the victim's phone number transferred to an outside line.

The individual then contacted the bank or credit union where the victim held a home equity line of credit and requested large transfers from the victim's account into a bank account opened in the Boston area by one of the defendants. Calls placed by the bank to the victim's home phone number were rerouted to the co-conspirator, who was able to pose as the account holder in order to authorize the fraudulent transfers. In some cases, the caller would request multiple transfers from the same line of credit; each transfer request ranged from $56,000 to $95,000.

Charged: Ricardo Peterson, 34, of Roxbury, Miguel Balan, 21, of Revere, John Bristow, 41, of Dedham, Molijah Burey, 23, of Dorchester, Troy Fernandez, 25, of Dorchester, Cherdya Grant, 44, of Hyde Park, David Johnson, 32, of Stoughton, John Johnson, 35, of Norwood, and Daries Hurt, 25, of Jamaica Plain.
Each of the defendants is accused of taking part in a widespread conspiracy to steal approximately $700,000 from the home equity line of credit accounts held by five different victims between November 2012 and February 2013.

Prosecutors allege that Peterson, Balan, and Bristow each received transfers from the same victim's account during December 2012. Bristow went on to transfer a large portion of the fraudulently received funds to accounts held by Burey and Fernandez. Balan, Bristow, Burey, and Fernandez each opened bank accounts days before receiving the fraudulent transfers; Peterson opened his bank account just over a month prior to receiving the transfer and had a negative account balance at the time funds were transferred into his account. After receiving the transferred funds, each of the defendants was captured in surveillance images making a series of large withdrawals at Boston-area banks until the newly-acquired balance was fully depleted.

Similar transfers were made from an Indiana-based bank to Hunt in November 2012, from a Wisconsin-based credit union to John Johnson and from an Indiana credit union to Grant in December 2012, and to David Johnson from a California lending institution in February 2013. Grant and David Johnson each opened bank accounts in the days leading up to the transfers; John Johnson and Hunt held bank accounts prior to that time. Their accounts were also drained through a series of cash withdrawals within days of receiving the transferred funds, prosecutors said.

Innocent, etc.