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I know this isn’t exactly salacious news, but I wanted to talk about personal credit so I’m covering it. Someone “stole” Demi Moore’s credit card and racked up $169,764 in charges at Nordstrom. This wasn’t just an issue of someone getting access to the number or the physical card. The person called the bank and claimed the original card was lost in order to get a replacement. Then they went to town shopping.
Criminal court documents obtained by ET on Tuesday claim that a man named David Matthew Read stole the 55-year-old Empire actress’ credit card between March 8 and March 27 of this year, allegedly spending more than $169,764.
According to the documents, Moore’s personal assistant called the credit card company to report that the card has been used for fraudulent transactions. During the conversation, they discovered that someone had reported the card lost and requested a replacement card. “D.M.’s personal assistant stated that neither she nor D.M. made this report or request,” the document reads.
Per the complaint, surveillance video then allegedly showed Read making purchases from Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue stores in and around Los Angeles at the same dates and times that Moore’s card was used at those stores.
The document states that Read was later arrested on April 5 outside of a storage unit he had rented in Hollywood. “In a post Miranda interview on April 5th, 2018, Read admitted to obtaining D.M.’s credit card without authorization and fraudulently using it to make purchases at stores,” according to the complaint. He is currently in jail.
That’s scary! At least the scammer was caught and is now in jail. Last year, I noticed that my credit rating kept lowering a small amount every month, and that it went from excellent to good. The monitoring service provided by my bank claimed it was due to lack of credit. I didn’t have any open accounts so I applied for two different cards and was denied, which baffled me because I’ve always paid bills on time. At that time I had that credit monitoring service, which pulled from Transunion, along with an identity theft protection service, AllClearID, and neither of them had any alerts.
Someone was applying for credit under my maiden name and an old address every few months through Experian, which I only noticed when I pulled my three credit reports! I was lulled into a false sense of security by two inadequate credit monitoring services. I’ve since frozen my credit with all four agencies. (New applications will ding your credit even if you put an identity theft alert on credit reports. You have to lock/freeze them to avoid this.) I also signed up for Lifelock on a police officer’s recommendation, which was worth it as they alerted me to another fake application. To raise my credit score I got a secured Discover credit card, which has been excellent.
No one has obtained any credit in my name (knock wood), but this has been a major PITA. It required research and trial and error. My long-winded point is that credit thieves are crafty and take advantage of the system. Monitor your credit through multiple channels as often as you can.
(This is a true story and is not an endorsement for any service.)
Photos credit: Backgrid and Getty
omg, such great advice. This has been a fear of mine, but I too have stuck my head in the sand. And I live in a state where you can get a free report from each company every year, so it’s stupid that I haven’t stayed on top of it. Going to go check up on that now. Yeah, I’m sure it was a PITA–I’m already heaving a sigh at the prospect! I’m glad you were able to get good results!
I wonder if there will ever be a way that your credit doesn’t get dinged for false stuff. Like, if it’s proven to be fraud, you get those points back. Credit scores are such a pain because of things like this! I have a woman that lives in a completely different state that I’ve never lived in whose information consistently pops up under my credit info. I’ve had to remove it again recently. And if an employer pulled up my info for a background check, her arrest record would pull up. I actually won money because of that one.
As you know you can get the fake requests taken off by working with the individual agency but you are still responsible for building up your credit again! That was the real shocker to me and my score is not where it was before all this. (I thought of mentioning that but I didn’t want to go on too long.) I’m so sorry that happened to you and good for you for taking it to court.
Thank you for reporting on this, and best wishes building your credit back up, Celebitchy. I put a freeze at 3 companies, and didn’t know there was a fourth. I just had to share a joke: “I’m so bad with money, I was a victim of identity theft, and my credit score went UP 100 points!”
Good advice indeed. Now, what’s Demi doing to her face???
My identity was stolen when I was a child by my estranged father. He even got a mortgage under my ss number. I only found out when I filed my taxes for the first time and my return was seized for back taxes. We then found out he had done it to my brother as well. It took us YEARS to fix it. This was back when identity theft wasn’t as common a problem as it is now and there weren’t a lot of mechanisms in place to protect people. And it lingers. One time I was being admitted into the hospital and when they pulled up my social his name popped up. This was years after the fact.
That is awful!!!!!! You have my sympathy. Your dad can celebrate Father’s Day with Meghan Markles’ dad: ugh!
This is not unique and is referred to as an account takeover and banks normally have an additional control when a replacement card is sent to a different address or an address change is done along with a card replacement. If you know the control though, you can manipulate it especially if you have knowledge of other personal details of Demi.
Tallulah does not look alright…. what’s going on?
She’s unattractive that’s what.
Wow @huckle, really? We don’t need to insult a woman’s looks, a young woman who’s done nothing at all to warrant that.
What I see is a young woman with olive skin, who’s either wearing a reddish eyeshadow and/or has a difference in pigmentation unde her eyes, as a lot of people do. Though I am quite sure that you are a perfect paragon of beauty 99% of the time, even you may have that brief period, minutes or seconds perhaps, where your skin is not perfectly clear and even in pigmentation. Because you are a human. No one deserves to be insulted for that. And no one deserves to be insulted for their looks.
Be better.
Gimme a break Jensies. The comment section of this website is full of people insulting women’s looks. See Astrid and Minx below commenting on Demi.
@huckle She’s a celebrity’s kid, not a celebrity. She’s not fair game, or shouldn’t be. She’s just a kid in a picture, and you’re cruel. Just own that.
Demi is starting to veer into Adams’ family territory with her hair
I don’t know why she thinks really long, jet black, center parted hair is a good look. It’s pulling her face down.
Great advice. Everyone should obtain a free copy of their credit report. You can obtain a free copy from the federal site https://www.annualcreditreport.com. It’s best not to obtain a copy from the three credit bureaus at the same time….rather pull a report quarterly from one of the three bureaus (say one report in February from Experian, then a report from Equifax in June, and then lastly, Transunion in October.)
How was this person able to get access to her information? Seems fishy…
In the last pic, is that Joaquin Phoenix on her right?!??
Monitor credit with some service. Experian emails me every time there’s a change to my credit file, and my file is locked with the other two.
I’m pretty mad at Discover. My unused account was hacked and three people were issued secondary cards under my name – all with different last names from me, and each other, in states I have never lived in. Discover thought nothing about this was unusual. I cancelled my account, which I had for fifteen years, that day.
We may hear more on this story. Will it go to court or just fade away? Some sources say the guy who stole her details was a young ex-boyfriend.
I froze my credit with all three credit agencies after the last major credit agency breach. It was free for the one that had the breach, the others cost a few bucks. I don’t intend on asking for any loans, new credit lines, etc. any time soon, so it was easy and no problem at all; definitely recommend it if you don’t plan on borrowing money, applying for a new credit card, etc.
1.) How does freezing your credit help your credit score, or does it just protect you from anyone else doing anything funny with your account?
2.) How do you “unfreeze” your credit when you do want to purchase something using a new loan or to get a new credit card?
3.) How does obtaining a secured credit card help your credit score? If you already have a credit card, say a department store credit card that don’t use much at all, does it help your credit score to use that type of card more?
Thanks in advance for answers!