MIAMI — After a City Furniture credit card with the stolen identity of a man in Torrance, California, was approved, a woman in Miami went shopping, according to deputies.
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The purchases at a City Furniture store in Hollywood were delivered to a townhouse at the InTown Apartments in Little Havana, according to deputies.
Ashley Almeida had also used someone else’s identity to lease the townhouse at 1900 SW 8th St., according to a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputy’s arrest report.
Detectives started investigating fraud in April after Synchrony Bank reported stolen identities were behind several City Furniture credit card accounts.
Kevin Kattoura, a City Furniture employee in Oakland Park, had “submitted” 10 of the applications, and “received commission payments for the fraudulent sales,” a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy wrote, according to an arrest report.
Broward…
This category refers to crimes committed by employees or insiders against their own organizations. It is often the most damaging because the perpetrator has authorized access to systems.
- Asset Misappropriation: The most common form, involving the theft of company resources. This ranges from simple “skimming” (taking cash before it’s recorded) to complex schemes involving the theft of inventory or intellectual property.
- Payroll Fraud: Employees may create “ghost employees” on the system, falsify their own timesheets to claim unworked overtime, or divert salary payments to their own accounts.
- Financial Statement Fraud: Management deliberately misrepresents the company’s financial health by inflating revenue or hiding liabilities to attract investors or meet performance bonuses.