If you’re an identity thief, make sure you abuse your victims inside surveillance-camera loaded shopping areas, which is exactly what federal officials claim Orange County’s Khanhloc Pham did this year in Las Vegas and at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.
According to a United States Postal Inspection Service report, Pham—a Garden Grove resident already on probation for earlier identity theft crimes—used stolen credit cards in February, March and April to steal merchandise worth $109,000.
It’s not clear exactly how much joy Pham—who was born in 1977—received from the alleged thefts, but federal officials took him into custody just before the Fourth of July holiday.
The postal investigation alleges that Pham used victims’ credit cards for high-end purchases.
In Las Vegas, he spent $28,000 at Audemars Piguet, $29,000 at Cartier, $2,600 at Hermes and $17,000 at Chanel, according to Matthew Markowski, a postal inspector.
Markowski also saw footage of Pham at South Coast Plaza, one of Southern California’s ritziest shopping malls, where he spent $14,000 at Louis Vuitton and $11,000 at Dior.
Federal officials believe he used a female “lookout” during his crimes and they know her identity, but she hasn’t been charged.
Inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana, a judge has not yet been assigned to preside over the case.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.