Arrests.
An 18-year-old man residing at Hatfield Village Apartments faces eight misdemeanor counts of identity theft and a felony charge of access device fraud after being accused by police of stealing credit and debit cards from vehicles on Cambridge Circle and Maple Avenue last winter and using them for Uber and gift cards, police said.
Jason Jayshawn Smith, police said in an affidavit, was arrested Jan. 26 by Hatfield Police, after video footage caught him on Dec. 6, 2023 buying two gift cards at Wawa for $106.95 each, and a $206.95 gift card at Rite-Aid, both in Hatfield Township, with a stolen Discover card.
Furthermore, police said Smith had 62 total credit or debit cards linked to his personal Uber/Uber Eats account.
On Oct. 12, 2023, police responded to the 1900 block of Maple Avenue for a theft from vehicle report, where a woman told police her purse was stolen from her car between Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, 2023, police said. All in all, three credit cards were stolen from the car.
About two months later, on Dec. 2, Hatfield Police responded to another theft from vehicle report, this time on the 2300 block of Cambridge Circle, police said. The male victim told police someone attempted to use his Bank of America credit card to order an Uber, per the report.
The man told police his wallet containing multiple credit and debit cards was stolen from his car’s center console between Dec. 1 and Dec. 2, police said.
Four days later, another resident on the same block of Cambridge Circle reported to police that her wallet containing multiple credit and debit cards, including a Discover card, was stolen from her car between Dec. 5 and Dec. 6, per the complaint.
On Dec. 6, the woman reported her Discover card was used at the North Broad Street Wawa to purchase two gift cards, and then used immediately after at the Rite-Aid across the street, where a third gift card was purchased, police said.
Video footage from both stores, police said, showed Smith using the Discover card. Smith, according to the affidavit, was wearing the same sneakers and backpack at the time of his arrest in January that he was wearing in the surveillance footage in December.
At the time of his arrest, police said Smith was found in possession of numerous credit cards and debit cards, and an Uber notification on his phone.
Police conducted a search warrant on an Uber account associated with Smith’s email, obtained from his iPhone, police said. On March 5, 2024, the results of a search warrant showed, police said, that Smith’s email was associated with an Uber account for “Face Smith,” and a phone number matching Smith’s was on the account too.
Police said an Uber Eats requested delivery address was found to match Smith’s Hatfield Village Apartments address. Further investigation revealed that Smith had 62 credit or debit cards linked to his account, with eight unidentified.
Four of the cards in Smith’s possession, per the affidavit, were found to be cards belonging to other people and which were previously reported stolen, including the Cambridge Circle and Maple Avenue cards.
Police said Smith used one of the cards stolen from Cambridge Circle to buy an UberX ride share in January for $24 to his father’s home in Glenside, and then used it again to rack up at least $100 more in Uber charges in January back and forth from Glenside to Hatfield.
Smith is also charged with a misdemeanor count of receiving stolen property, per court records.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 13 at 12:30 p.m.
