Identity Thief Thursday: Omaha Identity Theft Bust Leads To Gunfire

May 8, 2008

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Aside from being the home of Warren Buffet, Omaha was also the home of a identity theft bust that involved 2 police officers, a pregnant woman, a broken vase, and a man getting shot in the chest.

It All Started At A Church

At a church outside Omaha’s city limits, a woman left her purse in the car (people still do that?). The car was broken into and her cash, ID, and credit cards were stolen.

It looks like at that point the suspect, Jason Galle, and an unidentified pregnant woman took the stolen card and checked into the Marriott in downtown Omaha.

Wise Hotel Employees

When the pair checked in, hotel employees became suspicious so they phoned the name on the credit card. The person who answered, presumably the identity fraud victim, confirmed that the card had been stolen.

At that point, the hotel staff did the right thing and called police.

Like A Movie

What happened next was like a scene from NYPD Blue (minus the shower scenes). Two police officers attended the scene and went to the suspects’ room. In the hallway, they came across Galle and the pregnant woman leaving the room. Galle had a rolled up pair of jeans under his arm.

When the officers confronted Galle, a struggle ensued and the jeans fell and out rolled a .22 pistol.

During the fight which involved handcuffing the pregnant woman, Galle hit one of the officers in the head with a large vase, causing a 4 inch gash in the back of his head. At that point, it was time to stop messing around and out came the deputy’s service revolver.

Galle was shot once in the chest and was taken to hospital in critical condition (he is expected to recover),

Identity Theft Ring Busted

After all this went down, the police found out (maybe from the pregnant woman?) that the 2 were actually headed up to the 8th floor of the same hotel:

Additional deputies arrived at the hotel. Authorities headed to the eighth floor, where they found two men in a room with a copy machine and other instruments used for making false identification, Dunning said.

“I’m really having a good feeling that this will lead to the closing of an identity theft ring,” he said.

Hard to believe that all of this started with a purse left in the car outside a church. By the way, by all accounts the pregnant woman is fine.

Source: Omaha World-Herald

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Posted in Cases, ID Thief Thursday, Identity Theft