Rock Hill woman accused of stealing dozens of identities

ROCK HILL, S.C.,None — An identity theft case in Rock Hill grew so big that police there had to call in the U.S. Secret Service for help.

Teneka Hall, 28, faces federal charges. She's accused of stealing the identities of nearly 100 people from the Chicago area.

She worked in the human resources office of a Charlotte company called Iqor. The company handles HR and billing business that is outsourced by other companies.

Police told Channel 9 that all the victims live in Chicago. They are all customers of a gas company that's based there, but outsources part of its business to Iqor in Charlotte, where Hall worked.

"She was taking home sheets of people's names, addresses, their dates of birth, and their Social Security numbers and then later coming to the library and going online and making these fraudulent applications," said police detective Keith Dugan.

Dugan said Hall and her boyfriend, Tyree McDonald, used the public Internet room at the Rock Hill library branch to print off phony credit card applications. They sent out between 80 and 100 of them using the victim's names and waited for them to arrive in the mail, police said.

Police said they used computers at the library because they didn't have enough money to pay for Internet service at home.

"They got the credit cards and used them to buy gas, clothes, food, things like that. It all happened over about a month," Dugan said.

Police were first tipped to the crime when one of the victims called, asking about why a new credit card with her name on it was mailed to an address in Rock Hill, hundreds of miles away. The credit card company told police that several other cards had been mailed to that same address on Cherokee Avenue.

The Secret Service got involved, and Hall and McDonald both face federal indictments for aggravated identity fraud. McDonald was also charged with having a gun unlawfully, and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

Investigators are still adding up just how much money the two spent using other people's names.

New victims are still coming in, and it could take months for some of them to repair their damaged credit.

Dugan said all the victims are puzzled at how this could happen, halfway across the country.

"I'm still getting calls asking, 'How does this lady know me? How does this happen in South Carolina when I live in Chicago?'"

By phone and through email, Eyewitness News attempted to contact Iqor, where Hall worked in Charlotte, and did not hear back from them by late Monday.

Police said they weren't allowed to release the name of the Chicago-based gas company where the victims were customers.

WSOC