When one Pennsylvanian man couldn’t foot his bills, he opted to steal the identity of someone that could – one of the world’s richest men, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen.
An AWOL solider from Pittsburgh swiped Allen’s Citibank credit card account information earlier this year to make a $658.81 payment on a loan from the Armed Forces Bank, according to an Associated Press report.
A criminal complaint unsealed Monday claims that after acquiring Allen’s account information, the soldier, Brandon Lee Prince, 28, changed the address of the card to his own and reported it missing in an attempt to have a new card sent to his Pittsburgh address. The card was delivered and soon after, the fraudulent charges began to pile up.
On top of the loan payment, it was also used at a Pittsburgh GameStop ($278.18), a Family Dollar ($1) and at a Western Union, where Price tried to process a $15,000 transaction.
The bank noticed the illicit charges and promptly notified the FBI who had an agent follow Price around the neighborhood. After seeing him wearing the same clothes he wore in surveillance footage taken at the GameStop and Family Dollar stores, Price was arrested on March 2.
According to authorities, Price had actually been away from the army since June 2010 and wanted as a deserter.
Allen, who helped found Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, also owns the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers and the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and has a net worth of about $14.2 billion, according to Forbes – enough to rank at number 48 on the publication’s list of the richest people on the planet.
For more on this, check out the AP report via the Washington Post.
