Soldier has debit card swiped
Penn Township police say that while a man was serving in the military overseas, someone back home was fraudulently using his debit card to participate in online gaming.
Police on Saturday arrested Dylan J. Lambert, 25, of Middlesex Township on charges he made $1,264.34 in unauthorized transactions on the victim's bank account using the card.
District Judge Sue Haggerty arraigned Lambert on a felony count of access device fraud and misdemeanor counts of theft and receiving stolen property. He is free on $5,000 bail.
Penn Township police officer Stephen Setnar began his investigation Sept. 30 when the victim's sister appeared at the station to report finding money missing from her sibling's bank account.
She told the officer that her brother is in the military currently based in Norfolk, Va., police said, and she has authority to access his account to help pay bills because of his prior deployments to foreign countries.
No one else had been given permission to access his debit card.
An examination of the bank records, according to court documents, determined that while the victim was “serving his country on military deployment from January to August in the Persian Gulf, unknown to him, someone was using his debit card account” to rack up charges.
The unauthorized activity included transactions for online gaming-related expenses. The charges, police said, were linked to a ZIP code for Valencia.
The victim's sister advised Setnar that the only person her brother knew in that ZIP code was Lambert, a friend of his. Police said the two men had spent time together last winter before the victim's military deployment.
The officer on Sept. 30 spoke to Lambert, who “did admit that he had been using (the victim's) debit card and admitted that it was for around a 6-month period,” documents said.
Setnar said that instead of immediately filing charges, he gave Lambert the opportunity to make restitution to his friend. The officer described the defendant as being “cooperative” with police.
“I told him, 'Dylan, you don't want me involved,'” Setnar said Saturday. “I said, 'Call (the victim) up and take care of this.' I told him, 'Pay the debt and it's over.'”
But a little more than a week later, the officer learned that the defendant had not contacted the victim. Setnar arrested him at his home Saturday.
It was not known if Lambert has an attorney, and he could not be reached for comment.
