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QUOGUE — On June 5, at 5:30 p.m., a Quogue resident who lives on Pen Craig walked into the Quogue Village Police Station to report an attempted second-degree grand larceny, which is a class D felony. The resident stated that on the morning of June 4, he had emailed his contractor asking the contractor to send him any outstanding bills for work being done at his home. Later that day, the resident received an email from someone pretending to be the contractor, asking if he could switch payment methods and use a different bank. The following day, June 5, the resident received another email with the bank account information, and a request for payment totaling $51,834.00. At that point, the resident said he realized the email was fraudulent, because he had just paid the contractor a large sum of money, and the math in the email was wrong. The resident reached out to his contractor to let him know what had happened. No transaction was completed and no money was lost. The case was referred to the detective unit.
SOUTHAMPTON — A resident told Southampton Town Police on June 6 that he had recently mailed a check for more than $59,000 to a client but that his bank contacted him about the check a few days later and upon reviewing the check saw that it had been altered, changing the name it was payable to. He reported the incident to his bank’s fraud department.
WESTHAMPTON — A Westhampton Beach resident reported to Southampton Town Police on March 6 that she had looked up a phone number for MSC Cruises online in order to confirm details about a cruise reservation she had booked. When she called the number a person she believed to be an MSC employee told her that she still owed $594 for a “boat faculty charge,” police said, which she paid with a credit card but then discovered was a scam and that the person was not a cruise employee. She reported the fraud to her credit card company.
WESTHAMPTON — Two men were arrested for drug related crimes shortly before midnight on June 7 after the car they were in was pulled over by a Southampton Town Police officer on Montauk Highway. The officer determined that the driver, Daniel Hudak, 34, of East Moriches was driving while impaired by drugs and placed him under arrest for misdemeanor driving while ability impaired. When the officer searched the car he found packages of cocaine stashed in the car beneath both the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat. The passenger, Connor Stockton, 33, of Yaphank and Hudak were both charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fifth degree, a felony.
HAMPTON BAYS — Elmer Rojas de Cruz, 21, of Hampton Bays was arrested shortly after 5 a.m. on June 8 and charged with DWI after the vehicle he was driving crashed into a tree on Gravel Hill Road and a responding Southampton Town Police officer reported finding him in a heavily intoxicated condition.
SHINNECOCK HILLS — Dominic Stewart, 24, of Hampton Bays was arrested and charged with unlawful fleeing a police officer in the third degree, a misdemeanor, after he sped away from a police officer trying to pull him over, accelerating to more than 100 mph, passing vehicles on the road shoulder an nearly striking another vehicle at high speed, according to police. The officer that had originally tried to pull him over for speeding broke off pursuit near Hill Station Road but radioed to other officers who intercepted Stewart’s vehicle on Sunrise Highway a short time later and stopped him and placed him under arrest, police said. Stewart was also charged with misdemeanor counts of reckless driving and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and multiple vehicle and traffic law violations.
