Two men charged with identity theft and fraud after spending over $100,000

The watchful eye of a clerk and swift operations by county deputies led to the arrest of two young men accused of credit card fraud, Rocklin & Roseville Today reports. Michael Ross and Vyacheslav Berezenko were shopping at a store in Auburn, California on Tuesday night when the cashier became suspicious. While stalling their purchase, the cashier managed to alert authorities. Both suspects attempted to flee, but police found them in a Home Depot parking lot. The two men had $10,000 worth of merchandise in their vehicle, along with receipts documenting nearly $100,000 worth of purchases made with fraudulent credit cards. The suspects were taken to Placer County Jail and charged with identity theft, grand theft, forgery, conspiracy and possessing counterfeit credit cards. According to the Federal Trade Commision, there were approximately 975,000 cases of fraud and identity theft in the United States in 2010. Since the drastic boom of information on the internet in the mid 1990s, cases of fraudulent activity have increased at an enormous rate. ID verification has become important in light of this.