Identity thieves target local man, take over cell phone and credit accounts

NEWTON, Mass. — Identity thieves are going under-the-radar and over-the-top to target a newton man.

The thieves racked up more than $16,000 in credit card bills and as FOX25 learned, they went to great lengths to pull it off

It appears that the thieves knew that big purchases made in another state would trigger fraud alerts, so they made sure the alerts never arrived by first taking over the victims cell and home phone

Peter Papaporfiriou realized something was wrong when he called Verizon Wireless Tuesday to report problems with his service.

“I was thinking it was a mistake. I didn’t think anything of it,” he said.

The customer service operator told Peter the number no longer existed on the Verizon network and that it had been transferred to T-Mobile.

It took a couple of hours, but Peter was able to get his number back and his phone working again.

In a back-log of unread emails he also found one from credit card company Capitol One.

“So they looked at charges that were posted during the time when my cell phone was not available to me and sure enough probably over $16,000 in charges,” he said.

The charges were made in New York City in a three hour time period.

Somebody had a field day buying big tickets items at an Apple store on Peter's account

“I didn’t believe him. I thought he was joking because sometimes I can’t take him seriously because he likes to say stuff like that. But then I actually saw the serious of it. I was shaking my head and I couldn’t believe it,” Peter’s wife Nektaria said.

It gets worse. Peter then discovered that his land line had also been hacked.

“If a merchant was trying to reach me at home to verify that I made a purchase, I wasn’t getting the call because the house phone was being forwarded to another telephone number. It was definitely well played out,” Peter said.

Peter said he's not sure why he was targeted, or how the thieves knew his private passcodes to change his accounts

Thankfully, since the charges were unauthorized Peter is off the hook and it won’t cost him anything other than a lot of time.

Cox Media Group