Credit Card Shopping Spree Ends In OC

OCEAN CITY - A Columbia, Md. man was arrested this week and charged with 15 different counts ranging from theft and fraud to identity theft after going on a shopping spree in the resort with a stolen credit card.

Janny Sue Kim, 20, was arrested on Sunday after resort police were able to connect him to a series of illegal purchases with a credit card belonging to another man he claimed to have found. Kim's alleged theft scheme began to unravel when he attempted to purchase items from Malibu's Surf Shop on Sunday

Just before 6 p.m., Ocean City Police responded to Malibu's for a reported credit card misuse. The officers interviewed the store owner, who said an Asian man in camouflage shorts and no shirt with a tattoo on his hip had attempted to purchase $130 worth of goods on a credit card issued to an Andrew Behringer. When the owner asked the man, later identified as Kim, for identification, he said he would retrieve it from his room and left the store leaving the card behind.

Store employees followed Kim to 12^th Street and the Boardwalk, and when the officers arrived at Malibu's near 8^th Street, the employees informed the officers by cell phone they had the suspect in their sight. The officers responded to 12^th Street and took Kim into custody while they sorted out the details. An officer back at Malibu's relayed the credit card number to the arresting officer at 12^th Street, who called Bank of America to see if the card had been reported lost or stolen.

The officer was able to learn the card had been deactivated earlier that day because of an unusual amount of activity. Kim asked the officer who he was calling, and when the officer explained the call, Kim told him he had found the credit card. The officer searched the four shopping bags Kim had on his person and discovered various items of clothing as well as a new 'grill,' slang for a decorative dental appliance made of gold.

Through a series of phone calls with the bank, the officer was able to determine the card had been issued to a Charles Andrew Behringer of Ocean City, who was later contacted at his place of employment.

Behringer's bank statement showed as many as five transactions from earlier that day that he could not account for including various clothing and accessory stores throughout the downtown area. The officer responded to each of the stores on the list and confirmed it was Kim who had made the purchases using Behringer's credit card. In all, Kim was able to successfully purchase $261.41 worth of goods from four different stores and attempted to purchase another $392 in goods from two other stores for a total of nearly $684 combined, all on the credit card he allegedly found.