Man accused of using fraudulent plastic to charge $85,000 in purchases

A 20-year-old Raleigh man accused two weeks ago of spending $11,000 on other people's credit card accounts now faces charges of shopping at stores in Cary and Garner with bogus credit cards to the tune of $85,000.

Benjamin Cassidy Hames of 5125 Wickham Road, was arrested on warrants from Garner and Cary police alleging identity theft and financial card fraud and another in which Raleigh police accused him of cashing two checks drawn on a closed Bank of America account.

The largest amount that Hames was accused of putting on cards encoded with other peoples’ account information was $53,049.99 that Cary detectives said he spent on tools, hardware and gardening items in March at a Lowe’s Home Improvement store.

Four of the charges filed by Cary police involved charges made to a business called 919Dine.com, which delivers food people order off restaurant menus linked to its site. Detectives accused Hames of running up more than $2,500 with that business during March.

In Garner, some of the arrest warrants charged, Hames spent $17,596.80 on tools, gardening items and other “miscellaneous” products at a Home Depot. Another count cited a 40-gallon terrarium kit that was ordered online and picked up at a Petsmart store on Timber Drive.

Raleigh police charged Hames with getting just under $2,200 illegally from the State Employees Credit Union by cashing two checks drawn on the closed account.

Police have not disclosed in any of the charges so far how they believe Hames got the financial information they accuse him of using. They also have not said if they know what happened to the tools and other items they say he bought.

When Hames was arrested June 15, the charges came from Raleigh, Apex, Knightdale and Fuquay-Varina police. They included one accusation that he had tried to pawn a refrigerator shortly after he had bought it with a counterfeit credit card.

The charges in that round of accusations cited transactions in March and April.

Records show that Hames was first arrested last July on charges of having passed a worthless check and obtained property by false pretense in April 2015. Raleigh police swore out that warrants.

This year, Hames had four arrests before the one Wednesday. Knightdale police arrested him March 25 on a charge of obtaining property by false pretense. Three days later, Raleigh police obtained a warrant charging the same crime in the city.

Wake County sheriff’s investigators arrested Hames on April 18 on a false-pretense charge, and Raleigh detectives charged him June 15 with identify theft, the records show.

Hames was held Wednesday in lieu of $50,000 bail on the most recent charges and was to go before a judge Thursday. He is scheduled for court appearances July 7 and 13 on some of the past charges.

This story was originally published June 30, 2016 at 11:22 AM with the headline "Man accused of using fraudulent plastic to charge $85,000 in purchases."