This is probably unrelated but I thought I would post as a psa.
My buddy is a detective and he said that gangs work places like trail heads and health club parking lots. Those are the two he mentioned. They are called "felony lane gangs" because of their methods of cashing in. What they are about is stealing identities and checks. They will take a woman's purse and then use their ID to cash forged checks, previously stolen, to themselves using the new ID. They cash checks they have stolen in the past, typically months before. By waiting some time, red flags on the account from the check theft are dropped. Then months after the theft, they start cashing checks from the new woman's purse. They travel around to wealthy locales, one after another, running this scheme. They use the last lane at the drive-through so that they are harder to see against the ID presented. He said they are usually identified easily because it will be two or three black guys with one white woman. When stopped, they will have multiple wigs that they use to make up the woman to look like the ID. His advice was to never leave your ID and checks together in your car. Women leave ID's and check books in their purses while working out or hiking so they are typically the targets. It seemed like a stretch to me but he said there are many of these groups and that they are affiliated with larger gangs, some know each other and some are from competing gangs. He said they make tens of thousands per week. Apparently it is difficult to get the word out because when they are caught the locals assume the threat has passed but each group is just one of many.
