New Canaan Police on Feb. 6 arrested a 57-year-old Hamden woman after she used a fake ID, stolen Social Security number and forged utility bill to try and open a bank account last month, court documents show.
Police were alerted to her activity on the afternoon of Jan. 7 (a Wednesday) by representatives from First County Bank on Park Street, according to an arrest warrant application filed by Officer Sebastian Obando and signed Jan. 22 by state Superior Court Judge Bruce Hudock.
At the bank, Obando learned that a woman who had just left, wearing “a black coat, long blue nails and a designer bag” had “provided fraudulent documents,” Obando said in an affidavit that forms the bulk of the application.
The bank representatives showed police a copy of a New Jersey driver’s license with the name “Judith Clark” and a Social Security card with the same name, as well as a Western Union money order and Eversource bill, the arrest warrant application said. The bank workers said they knew immediately that the driver’s license was fake, it said.
Ultimately the woman told the bank that she “decided to leave” and said that “she would go to another branch,” the affidavit said.
Obando said that when he went to the street address on the utility bill — 600 Old Stamford Road Apt. 2 — he discovered that no such apartment existed.
Police traced the Social Security number to an elderly Stamford woman and tried to inform her that her data had been compromised, Obando said in the arrest warrant application. Then Officer Owen Ochs posted the fake New Jersey license in an “attempt to identify” bulletin and Westchester County Real Time Crime Center Facial Recognition software provided a possible match for the suspect. Police found that it traced to a white woman in Hamden and secured a “DMV blowback photo” of the suspect that the representatives from First County Bank identified as the suspect. When police performed a database search they found that the suspect had “an extensive 40-page rap sheet for numerous crimes,” the application said.
Police charged her with criminal impersonation, second-degree identity theft and second-degree forgery. They took custody of her at 9:30 p.m. on Feb. 5 at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, transporting her back to NCPD headquarters for processing. She remained in custody on $100,000 bond and was scheduled to appear Feb. 6 in state Superior Court. She now has been released from custody on $100,000 bond and is scheduled for arraignment March 31, Connecticut Judicial Branch records show.