A man was arrested on Monday after putting $967.61 on a stolen credit card at the east side Walmart in Casper.
An iPhone 8 Plus, service contract and Pelican brand phone case were all purchased with the card.
The card was one of several in a wallet stolen from a locker at the YMCA that morning. Also taken in the heist was an Apple Watch, folding knife and $180 of cash.
Another card inside the stolen wallet was used that morning at Target for two purchases totaling $765.73.
Casper Police officers were able to obtain surveillance video of the Walmart transaction showing a “skinny white male with a ‘man bun’ or ‘top knot’ hairstyle, wearing a brown Wyoming Cowboys jersey with a number ‘1’ on it,” according to a police affidavit.
Police gathered a “sloppy cursive signature” from the receipt of the transaction, along with several frames from the surveillance video. From that evidence police were able to identify the man named Joshua Alan Smith from previous book-in photos in the police system.
Meanwhile over at Target, officers found surveillance video and “observed a heavyset white male with brown hair” using one of the victim’s credit cards to purchase “several electronic items and clothing items, part of which were paid for back at the electronics register and part at the front register,” according to the affidavit. The total spent there on the stolen card was $765.73.
While interviewing YMCA employees, police were told that two “non-member temporary use day passes” were issued that morning. One of the suspects was seen on the YMCA surveillance video and appeared to be the same person in the Target video. The man had used his drivers license to obtain the passes, according to the affidavit.
Later in the evening, police went to a public intoxication call at Party America on 2nd street where they found a man “wearing a brown Wyoming Cowboys jersey with a yellow collar who was behaving very strangely, twitching and couldn’t stop moving,” said the affidavit.
Police identified the man as “Joshua Alan Smith”, wearing the same clothes as the person in the Walmart video and holding an Apple iPhone 8 Plus with Pelican case.
Smith told police that he and another man were homeless and slept in a Ford Explorer the previous night. That morning, Smith said they went to the YMCA to shower. According to Smith, he went back to the car as the other man went in. Afterwards Smith said he was driven to the Target parking lot and handed Smith a card and said “go over to Walmart and buy yourself a new phone, just keep it under $1,500,” according to the affidavit.
Smith said the other man told him the cards came from his grandmother, but “Smith hadn’t even bothered to look at the name on the card because he was ‘so high he didn’t really care’,” said the affidavit.
Smith was transported to the Natrona County Detention Center and booked for conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and credit card fraud.
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