HPD aims to require
pawnshop e-receipts

Police want a law requiring
electronic files in order to track
identity theft suspects

Honolulu police want state lawmakers to require pawnshop owners to file all receipts electronically so that investigators can readily see who sold what items.

Detectives said that way, pawnshops could hand over a computer disk with the information on it instead of police going through a stack of pawnshop tickets. The switch, according to police, would help them better track potential identity theft suspects, who often buy merchandise with someone else's forged checks or stolen credit cards, then pawn the items for money.

"We want to find out what crumb is selling what," said Capt. Ed Nishi, head of property crimes at HPD's Criminal Investigation Unit.

"A lot of times, what they do is buy a lot of merchandise, pawn it and get cash for it ... many to feed their drug habit."

State law mandates that pawnshops keep track of what is sold to them by having customers fill out a pawn ticket, which includes the seller's personal information along with details about the items sold. The ticket also includes a thumbprint of the person who sold the items.

"They could electronically scan the finger," said Nishi. "It becomes less labor-intensive for us, and the information would be uniform. ... Right now, a lot of the tickets are different from shop to shop."

Some pawnshop owners are worried that changing the law would punish the good owners along with the bad. Concerns include how much such an electronic filing system would cost and how long it would take to install.

"I'm really just a small business. I do everything myself manually," said Courtney Jeter, owner and operator of Gold Hawaii Pawn, 1810 N. King St. "I'm against it because I'm not computer-literate, and this would put my business on hold.

"Besides, I think police are doing an adequate job already. ... They come by once or twice a month to collect the tickets, and they can see for themselves that we're all operating as best we can within the law."

Police are looking for better ways to enforce the law because of a recent upswing in activity by identity thieves, Nishi said. Last week, financial fraud detectives along with U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Postal Service inspectors announced the discovery of four elaborate forgery operations, termed "forgery factories" by police, in Waikiki and downtown hotel rooms.

In each hotel room, police found a makeshift forgery lab complete with laptop computers, laminators, files full of victims' personal and financial information, and a card printing machine, which printed text and pictures onto blank plastic cards, creating the fake IDs.

Police said the high-quality IDs made in these labs would fool even an experienced investigator. According to Nishi, exactly how many people were affected by the forgery operations is still being determined.

"It's like a can of worms," Nishi said. "More complaints are coming in as we investigate."