AUBURN — A Maryland man staying at a Lewiston motel was arrested and charged this week felony forgery and theft involving credit card fraud.
Brian Boley, 32, of Takoma Park, Maryland, was arrested Wednesday after a four-month investigation, Auburn police said in a news release.
Both of the felony charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Boley also is charged with two misdemeanors: misuse of a scanning device or re-encoder and possession of forgery devices.
Deputy Police Chief Timothy Cougle said Boley is accused of using credit card “re-encoders” to fraudulently load victims’ account information onto stolen gift and credit cards.
Police in Yarmouth and Cape Elizabeth also were seeking Boley for fraudulent activity that included using stolen credit card information at local stores, police said.
Police armed with a search warrant found him in a Lewiston motel room, where they seized 80 stolen gift cards, a laptop, a credit card reader-writer and other evidence.
He was taken to the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn and was being held in lieu of $25,000 cash bail or $10,000 cash with supervised release.
He appeared Thursday in 8th District Court in Lewiston, where a judge ordered conditions of bail, should Boley be released, include not to leave Maine without the court’s permission and to not have any gift cards, scanning devices, re-encoder devices or forgery devices.
A police detective wrote in an affidavit that police were tipped off to suspicious activity when the manager at a local drugstore called Sept. 7 and said a man had been in and out of the store over the past few days trying to buy pre-paid cards with credit cards that kept getting declined. That man was later identified as Boley, police said.
Police found Boley in the area and searched him, turning up 15 gift and credit cards. The cards were turned over to a special agent with the Secret Service. Eight of the cards had been re-encoded with credit card numbers, Detective David Madore wrote in his affidavit.
In December, police received a complaint that a victim’s credit card had been used at a local department store. Surveillance showed a man who appeared to be Boley making a purchase for iTunes gift cards.
Police tracked Boley to a Lewiston motel.
Madore wrote that Boley has a prior history of “similar fraudulent activity” in Maryland.
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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