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Officers responded to Five Cents Savings Bank on Thompson Road just after 11 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12, after a man attempted to make a large cash withdrawal under suspicious circumstances, Webster police said.
Ross Peterson, 48, of Pontiac, Michigan, told the teller that he was there on the order of a "sick friend," but it was a ruse. He was using the person's driver's license and credit card he'd somehow received a day before, police said.
This wasn't the first time he'd done this scam, authorities said. He'd scammed $9,000 from the Five Cents Savings Bank in Shrewsbury using someone else's identity, but the bank had warned other branches to be on the lookout for this kind of activity.
When police arrested Peterson, he had credit cards in the names of two other people from Michigan. Police charged him with
- Identity Fraud
- Attempted larceny from a person over 60
- Two counts of receiving stolen property
- Possession of a false RMV document
Officers learned he had worked with a woman who flew back to Michigan shortly after the Shrewsbury scam. They spoke with airport authorities, who arrested her as she got off the plane. She had $7,600 in cash on her, police said.
Victoria Hutson will be charged for her role in the scheme and extradited to Massachusetts.
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