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Southold blotter: Identity thief charged $490 to victim’s credit card

A Cutchogue man was the victim of more than $400 in fraudulent charges in a case of identity fraud last month, according to a police report filed last Wednesday.

The Harbor Lane man told police last Wednesday that an unknown person opened a credit-card processing account using his name and Social Security number. The suspect charged $487.57 between July 12 and July 31, according to the report.

• A Cutchogue woman told police last Tuesday night that she was mugged by two males, possibly of Hispanic descent, near Cutchogue East Elementary School, though she retracted that claim the next day, according to a police report.

The woman reported that she was riding her bicycle home around 11:20 p.m. last Tuesday when two men jumped out of the bushes on Route 25 by the school and pushed her off her bike, the report stated. The woman could not provide an accurate description of the suspects since it was dark, but she said they were possibly Hispanic.

She told police that night that the men took $63 from her purse and that she lost her front teeth in the fall from her bicycle, police said. After returning to her Praity Lane home to treat a cut on her knee, she returned to the scene to look for her teeth.

However, the next day, the woman recanted her statement and told a detective that “she thinks she imagined the incident, and that she was not robbed,” the report stated.

The woman still believes she fell and lost her teeth, which she found the next day.

• Two Greenport men were involved in a verbal argument last Monday about one of the man’s dogs running on the other’s property, according to a police report.

A woman who lives on Sutton Place called police to report an unknown black dog running at large on her property, according to the report. An officer arrived to find her husband and the dog’s owner arguing in front of the residence.

The husband told the dog’s owner that if the dog enters his property again, he will be forced to kill it, police said. The dog’s owner responded that if the husband killed his dog, “he would be forced to do the same to him,” the report states.

The officer told the dog’s owner to be more careful in securing his dog at home, and the owner complied.

The husband signed a Southold Town Code violation for a dog running at large, police said.