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On Tuesday, acting Westchester County District Attorney James McCarty announced that Gabriel Young, 26, has been sentenced to one to three years in state prison after pleading guilty last month to a felony charge of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument.
Young’s co-defendant, Omar Hidalgo, is scheduled to be sentenced in two weeks on the same charge.
According to McCarty, On Dec. 1 last year, at the Central Avenue Best Buy in Hartsdale, Hidalgo entered the store to purchase an iPad with a forged Georgia driver’s license that had his photo, but bore the name Daniel Lopez and a forged credit card with the same identity.
Nearby police who were onsite were approached by a manager at Best Buy, who thought the license and credit card looked “suspect,” to which the officers agreed.
Hidalgo was joined in his rented car by Young, who had exited Smash Burger with several bags of food. Young was in the driver’s seat, with Hidalgo as his passenger when they were approached by police. Hidalgo was taken from the vehicle and had a forged license and multiple forged credit cards in his wallet.
During their investigation, the Greenburgh police officers searched the car, where they found a cell phone, four forged credit cards and cash. The car was impounded, and a further investigation revealed 83 forged credit cards under the passenger floor, with a forged Connecticut license. One of the cards recovered was used by Young at the Hartsdale Smash Burger.
Additionally, police recovered several Playstation 4 gaming systems and dozens of high dollar value gift cards. A search warrant was issued for a laptop in the vehicle, where police discovered multiple credit card “dumps,” which “represented hundreds, possibly thousands of stolen credit card numbers purchased on the dark web.”
Young has been remanded to the custody of the New York State Department of Corrections. Hidalgo will be sentenced on Tuesday, Nov. 29 in Westchester County Court.
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