Man charged in credit card scheme

A Queens man who used "re-encoded" credit cards to buy electronic equipment was charged with grand larceny Thursday after he used one of the fraudulent cards at a Levittown electronics store, Nassau police said.

Kevon Tuckett, 26, of Jamaica, was arrested when he tried to buy a computer using a fake credit card at a Best Buy store on Hempstead Turnpike, police said.

In the re-encoding scheme, genuine credit card information is copied from a legitimate card and electronically transferred to the magnetic strip of a fake card.

After Tuckett's arrest police found he had three more fake credit cards, police said, adding that investigators and an internal audit by Best Buy showed that during the past two months Tuckett used similar cards to make more than $7,800 in purchases at Best Buy stores in Nassau County.

Tuckett is charged with one count each of grand larceny and scheming to defraud, and three counts of possession of a forged instrument. He faces arraignment Friday at First District Court, Hempstead.

By JOSEPH MALLIA
Posted Sunday, November 16, 2008

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