David Smith, 21, was picked up by the FBI Westchester County Safe Streets Task Force on Monday and is awaiting extradition.
Smith is facing charges of larceny, forgery, trafficking in personal identifying information, and computer crimes, police said.
Smith was first arrested in January after patrol officers responded to a domestic violence incident at an apartment on Prospect Street.
Police said the department’s Financial Crimes Unit then took an interest in him due to what officers noticed in the apartment.
“Stacks of cash, over 100 payment cards in names other than the two people involved [in the domestic violence incident], a handgun, two fake IDs, and an illegal extended magazine on that handgun,” investigator Mike Stempien told News 12.
Stempien said there were also five safes that search warrants determined were filled with cash. In total, police recovered $733,000 from the apartment.
“So it’s a massive amount of money in a single apartment in Stamford for this guy running this scheme that was obviously very lucrative to him,” said Stempien.
The scheme allegedly targeted DoorDash drivers in California. Stempien explained Smith would use one of his many phones to place a fake delivery order to a restaurant in the Golden State.
Then when the driver was on the way, Smith would call them from a different phone and say he was DoorDash support, and there was a problem with the order, Stempien said.
“Then he would get them to click a link or go to a website and that essentially would turn over their credentials, their username and password, to him. Once he was in control of that, he would change the billing information and steal any funds that they had for deliveries they had done, basically steal their paycheck,” stated Stempien.
Smith is accused of doing this to more than 700 drivers over the course of about 2 ½ years beginning in June 2020.
Stempien said Smith also stole the identities of another 75 people to open over 100 debit card accounts, where he transferred the stolen money.
“We spoke with some of these DoorDash drivers who lost multiple paychecks, and some even reported they were unable to get back into their accounts and literally had to quit due to the havoc Smith wreaked on their accounts,” recalled Stempien.
He told News 12 investigators don’t know why Smith targeted DoorDash drivers and said there is no information he ever worked for the company.
In response to an inquiry from News 12, a DoorDash spokesperson said the company regularly provides tips to employees on how to keep their accounts secure, including to never share personal information even if the request appears to come from Support or the person knows specific details about your order.
Smith is being held on $2 million bond and supposed to be extradited to Connecticut next week where he’ll be arraigned in Stamford Superior Court.
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