The Queens DA's office says an Astoria landlord apparently stole his tenant's identity in order to rack up $50,000 worth of purchases. The Daily News says Jorgji Glekas went to the police after getting bills from credit card "accounts she hadn't opened - then grew suspicious when [landlord Phivos] Ioannou asked if she had received any mail that didn't belong to her." Ioannou used his tenant's name and Social security number to buy numerous items,......

Dan Kaufman, the man accused of stealing customers’ credit card info at several Brooklyn Heights eateries, now knows what it feels like to be on the wrong end of crime. According to the Brooklyn Paper, Kaufman returned home to find the locks changed at his apartment on Pierrepont Street. When a locksmith finally came and opened the door, he discovered that the place had been “ransacked.” The article doesn’t definitively say who’s responsible, but one......

A former Saks Fifth Avenue suit salesman allegedly used his employee-discount threads to glide past security in Midtown office buildings and steal cash and credit cards from empty offices. 34-year-old Edward Proctor was arrested last week and accused of lunchtime stealing sprees at CBS offices and another building on 49th Street in May and June. “I was in the next room eating lunch when he went behind my desk," one victim tells the Post. Proctor......

Dan Kaufman, the co-owner and manager of Busy Chef in Brooklyn Heights who stands accused of identity theft and credit card forgery, is out on bail thanks to his girlfriend, who put up $50,000 after a judge refused to believe that Kaufman's own bail money was obtained legally. A grand jury convened this week to hear the 19 charges against Kaufman, who allegedly charged a total of $24,978.53 to 19 customers' credit card accounts. The......

This is any credit (or debit) card user's worst nightmare: Dan Kaufman, who manages Blue Pig ice cream, Oven pizza, Busy Chef and Wine Bar in Brooklyn Heights, was arrested for taking $25,000 from customers' credit cards. According to the Post, Kaufman would take "credit card slips from Wine Bar and Oven, and then ran them through again at his Busy Chef stores and an outlet on Court Street, pocketing the dough." Kaufman surrendered yesterday......

It seems that after months of threatening, chasing and punching passengers who insist on paying with plastic, some city cab drivers have come to love the new credit card devices, which will be in all taxis by the end of August. Their original objections were to the 5% transaction fee, but now drivers are reporting higher tips because of the way the machines display the tipping options. One cabbie tells the Sun he’s earning $100......

After announcing an undercover program to crackdown on bad cabbie behavior a few weeks ago, the Taxi and Limousine Commission says it already sees improvement. One of the biggest complains had been taxi drivers refusing to accept credit cards from driver. Even though driers with credit card payment systems are required to accept credit card payment, many are unhappy they have to pay a 5% handling fee per credit card transaction (that cost is not......

Photo: Sherri Jackson "He put his face into the plexiglass separation, the section that is left open, and screamed 'You f------ b----!' and spit at me, which I could feel spray all over my face. I screamed the loudest I have ever screamed in my life: 'Let me out of this cab!'" So ended a ride home to the Upper West Side for 24-year-old Sarah Snedeker, who claims her driver became irate when she insisted......

Last year a taxi-patron was able to hack into a car's computer system, discovering people paying via credit card would have their information stored locally, right there for any enterprising passenger - or driver - to access. As if getting punched in the face for using plastic wasn't enough to worry about! Yesterday, the NY Sun reported one credit card technology provider would change "its security policies" after this discovery. VeriFone is responsible for 45%......

Photo by kerfuffle & zeitgeist. An East Village woman says she was punched in the face by an unhinged cabbie when she insisted on using the taxi’s credit card machine to pay her fare. Tamara Perez had arrived outside her apartment when she realized she was out of cash, so she told the driver she’d be paying with plastic using the self-automated card reader installed in the back. Apparently, the hack couldn’t hack it,......