Demetrio Tejada of Hillsdale Man Charged with Fraud and Identity Theft
HILLSDALE, N.J. (March 22, 2017) — Information from alert postal inspectors has resulted in the arrest of a Hillsdale man for fraud and identity theft.
Gurbir S. Grewal, Bergen County Prosecutor, announced that Demetrio Tejada of 55 Yesler Way, Hillsdale, was arrested yesterday following a joint investigation of his office and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and was charged with identity theft, impersonation, credit card theft and theft by deception.
Authorities were alerted to Tejada’s activities when an investigator from the Postal Inspection Service contacted the prosecutor this February, Grewal said. Postal inspectors had noticed a high amount of online change-of-address requests which were filed listing an address in Hillsdale. Subsequent investigation in cooperation with the prosecutor’s Financial Crimes Unit found that the change-of-addresses were for people who had recently died. They were also all directed to addresses of homes owned by Tejada, who would then use those newly-created identities to apply for credit cards, investigators say.
Further investigation showed that Tejada, 51, a native of the Dominican Republic, had been operating the scheme for more than a year, from December 2015 until he was arrested yesterday in Hillsdale. During that period he was able to obtain more than 200 credit cards using the fraudulent identities and addresses. He used the credit cards to make fraudulent purchases in New Jersey and Connecticut, investigators charge.
When he was arrested, he had multiple stolen identities, fraudulently obtained credit cards, forged driver’s licenses and equipment used for producing phony identification in his possession.
Tejada, who is unemployed, was preliminarily charged with impersonation, third degree; trafficking in the personal identifying information of another, second degree; possession of materials to make or making a document which falsely purports to be a driver’s license, second degree; theft by deception, third degree; and fraudulent use of credit cards, third degree. Tejada is being held in the Bergen County Jail without bail pending his first court appearance and a detention hearing.
These are merely charges and allegations. Al person are assumed innocent.
