I'm currently a senior at a University in Maryland, and i'm stuck in a strange situation. My friend, Sandy, purchased a Universal Gym through an amazon merchant about 3 months back and had it delivered to my building (it was meant to be a christmas/birthday present.) A few weeks ago, two detectives came to my apartment and informed me that the Universal Gym was purchased using someone else's credit card. They proceeded to confiscate the Universal Gym from her apartment later that day [we had to put it in her apartment as mine was too small.]
Now, the first thing to note is that I did not place the order for the Universal Gym, in fact, I didn't know she had purchased it until she called me the day it was being delivered.
Shortly after she had made the purchase online, she was a victim of identify theft herself as someone placed over $3500 in charges on the same credit card she used. This occured within 48 hours of her placing the Universal Gym order. The account was closed and a new card was given to her, and she was told that previous purchases would be transfered over to her new account.
As we stand today, I am soon to be charged with Credit Card Fraud and her as an accomplace, as they believe that I stole/found/obtained someone else's credit card information and gave it to her to use and now she's trying to hide information from them in order to protect me. The reason they believe it's me, apparently, is due to other purchases made on the gentleman's credit card of subscriptions to pornographic sites. Hmm... how convenient.
A couple of questions:
1) Is it possible that the credit card information was changed during the transaction and the shipping address left as is through some sort of malicious software or someone's wrong doing?
2) Can detectives simply accuse whoever THEY think must've done it without direct proof?
3) Is it possible that this gentleman's credit card info was obtained via the web by multiple users that made different purchases, and is it right for the detectives to simply link all of the purchases to one person?
I offered them my computer the day they came, but they refused to take it as they sympathized that I was a student and would need it for work.
I study Computer Science (regretfully in this case as it makes me look even more guilty) and am well aware of cases where identity theft is very easy for a hacker. I myself do not possess the skills to "phish" information online, but i'm not sure that that can be proven by simply looking through my computer.
WHAT CAN I DO????![]()

