Con artists try their hands at Pinecrest, with mixed results

Police were called in on two separate incidents, arresting a man who tried using a fake I.D. to buy a $1,600 iPad Pro on someone else's Verizon account. Detectives are still looking for two suspects who pulled money off the bottom of a $3,025 stack of cash, leaving REI with $2,000 of what they walked in with and three Garmin sports watches.

ORANGE, Ohio -- Police were called to Pinecrest recently on separate reports of fraud and theft by deception involving crooked customers, with one arrest made and two suspects still at large.

Responding to Verizon Wireless on July 19 on a report of a man possibly using a fake I.D., the first officer on scene saw a man leaving the store and told him to stop, at which point he started running and got in the passenger side of an awaiting gray 2015 Buick.

Other officers arrived and detained the car, identifying the passenger as a Bedford Heights man, 20, whose photo was on the Ohio driver’s license provided to the Verizon manager when he tried to purchase a $1,600 iPad Pro 512 Wi-Fi.

But when officers ran the driver’s license number, the personal information listed on the state computer came back to a different name, photo and identity: that of a Ravenna man, 19. The manager said he initially called police because the license did not look authentic and also had a damaged magnetic strip.

The suspect had also provided the authorized phone number of the absent Ravenna man to access his Verizon account and buy the iPad Pro. When police went back out to the car being detained, smelled marijuana and searched it, they found an iPhone 14 as well as paperwork associated with the Ravenna man’s account.

When police called the number provided to the Verizon manager in order to buy the iPad, the phone in the suspect’s car rang.

All of the evidence was collected and the Bedford Heights man was taken to the Solon jail on charges of theft and obstructing official business, with the driver, a Bedford man, 20, released from the scene.

Then on July 24, police were called to the Pinecrest REI Co-Op to meet with the manager, who said the outdoor sports equipment store’s cash register came up $2,000 short the day before.

Management tracked the loss to around 1:30 p.m. July 23, when an unknown man and woman came into the store and bought two Garmin Epix Pro Gen 2 watches, along with a Garmin Feni 7X Sapphire watch for a total of $3,025. The couple said they wanted to pay in cash.

Security camera footage showed the woman counting out the money and placing it in stacks of $1,000.

The cashier recounted the money and the woman then picked up the stacks and put them together -- while removing $2,000 off the bottom before handing it back to the cashier.

The manager said the two suspects seemed to be engaging the cashier during the checkout to distract him, and he did not notice the short-change diversion as he placed it in the register.

The suspects then left the store with the watches and the $2,000 sleight of hand, with the investigation continuing and police requesting a copy of the security video.

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