On June 28, a 68-year-old man going by the name of Larry Samhat walked into the Brustolon Buick dealership in Mystic and drove off the lot with a 2019 Mercedes E300 that cost $48,067 2019.

“Samhat,” was dropped off at the dealership by an Uber, spent three minutes looking the car over and never even test drove the car before signing the paperwork to finance the purchase through General Motors. He presented what appeared to be a legitimate Michigan driver’s license and a Comcast billing statement for a Ridgefield, Conn., home – supposedly his second home.

It turns out the man who left with the car was actually 68-year-old Kevin Meehan, an admitted crack user from East Hartford who police said performed similar thefts at four other car dealerships around the state.

Stonington police determined that at the heart of the case was an identity theft, a crime that has hit record numbers in the U.S. with financial losses totaling $16.4 billion in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The same statistic shows 23.9 million people had their identities stolen in 2021 with the most common crime being the fraudulent use of a credit card or bank account.

During the investigation into the Mystic theft, Stonington police contacted the real Larry Samhat in Deerhurst, Mich., who by Oct. 18 had by that time become aware his identity had been stolen and being used in Connecticut to finance and purchase vehicles. He had discovered the loans in his name from the credit bureau and financial institutions where they were financed.

The photo on the license Meehan presented wasn’t Samhat’s and he had never been to Connecticut, police said. He doesn’t know how his identity was stolen.

Stonington police Detective Sgt. William Morrison caught up with Meehan in a Hartford courthouse on Oct. 26.

“Meehan said that he knew why I wanted to talk to him, that it was one of the worst 18 months of his life and that he made a stupid decision to help those idiots and now he was going to jail, that there were five cars involved, and he couldn’t believe he did this,” the arrest warrant in the affidavit states.

Meehan told investigators he met a guy, named T.T., he had been buying crack from who asked him if he wanted to make some money – $500 for every car he managed to steal. After stealing the cars, he would deliver them to a guy named Ricky who would give him an extra piece of crack as a bonus. Meehan said he never did get the $500 per car that was promised.

Meehan said he thinks T.T. would find cars on the internet and steal an identity to buy the car. Most of the information was faxed to the dealership, Meehan said. He thinks the cars would later be sold on the street for $5,000 after the vehicle identification numbers were changed.

Meehan is a suspect in the theft of a 2021 Infinit Q50 from Harte Infiniti dealership in Hartford, a Toyota Tacoma pickup from European Motors in Middletown and a Ford F-150 pickup truck from a dealership in Bristol, records show.

On Aug. 8, Bristol Police nabbed Meehan with a fake Texas driver’s license while financing the purchase of a 2019 Mercedes at the Blasius of Bristol car dealership.

Eva Valasquez, the president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said while it does take some planning, the fact that someone was able to drive off with a car is not all that surprising.

The Identity Theft Resource Center provides free recovery services to victims of identity crimes, and Valasquez said she’s seen all kinds of identity theft crimes.

“Our identity is out there,” she said. “We know that this issue has been exponentially worse year after year.”

Personal information is typically obtained through data breaches, or unauthorized access to confidential personal information, Valasquez said. There are still a variety of ways personal data is compromised such as phishing scams, she added.

How the thieves were able to obtain Samhat’s information is unclear but Valasquez said data breaches happen all of the time and many of those breaches reveal things like Social Security numbers, financial and account information and just about any other type of data that makes it easy to steal someone’s identity.

“Driver’s license data and fake driver’s licenses are a hot commodity because they are being used for a lot of authentications,” Velasquez said.

If someone has stolen driver’s license information, Vasquez it can be sold on the dark web or identity marketplaces and can be used to create a fake id.

Valasquez said it’s not hard to believe that a man was able to obtain a car loan at a dealership if he had a legitimate driver’s license, or a license that had the appropriate information that if checked would not raise any red flags.

Things that a normal car buyer might be concerned about – the price of the car or the interest rate – “thieves don’t care about those things. They’re not paying back the money. You just want to walk out of there with a car,” she said.

One of the easiest preventative measures a person can take to stop someone from opening a new financial account, such as a car loan or credit card in your name is a credit freeze, Valasquez said. It’s a security measure that restricts access to someone’s credit report.

The credit reporting agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion will deny access to the credit report until it is “thawed” by contacting the agency.

Meehan was charged by Stonington police with first-degree larceny, first-degree identity theft and second-degree forgery. The case is pending in New London Superior Court. Police are working to obtain the identity of the men who hired Meehan.

A representative from Brustolon was not immediately available to comment.

For more information on how to protect against identity theft visit www.idtheftcenter.org

g.smith@theday.com