What goes around certainly comes around, at least for one New Jersey man.
Kenneth Costello, 49, a customer at a local TD Bank branch, accidentally dug himself into a deep hole when he alerted officials about suspicious activity on his bank account. After authorities investigated to find out who had siphoned $100,000 from Costello's bank account, they charged him with being a thief, too. Costello had allegedly pocketed $545,384 by filing fraudulent tax returns, according to the Gloucester County Times.
Authorities say the money missing from Costello's account had gone to Lisa Jarvis, 32, a bank teller, who allegedly made an extra copy of the customer's debit card to give herself access to his funds, according to the Courier Post. Jarvis is being indicted for stealing from Costello over a two-year period. Costello is being charged with filing four bogus tax returns.
As a teller, Jarvis had easy access to Costello's account, but it's not just bank employees who can create phony debit cards. Last month, Canadian police busted 46 people involved in a massive debit-card fraud scheme; the thieves allegedly defrauded victims out of millions of dollars by using cloned debit and credit cards.
While copying debit cards has gained popularity among tech-savvy thieves, pocketing bogus tax refunds is even more common. Scammers steal large sums of money from the government by lying about their income or stealing someone else's identity when filing their returns.
Earlier this month, police arrested an Oregon woman after she received a sham tax refund worth $2.1 million. Just last year, the IRS received 2.2 million fraudulent returns.
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