Rhode Island Couple Accused of Stealing ID of Man in Ireland

A Rhode Island couple has been charged with illegally using the personal information of an American citizen living in Dublin, who says he learned of the scam through Facebook, federal authorities announced Friday.

Federal prosecutors say the couple, who live in Warwick but whose true names aren’t known to authorities, used the stolen information during the last 18 years to obtain passports, a mortgage for their house and drivers’ licenses.

A criminal complaint unsealed Friday charges the man, a Russian national, and his wife, a naturalized American citizen, with identity theft, bank and passport fraud and other crimes. The man is being held pending a hearing next week, and his wife was released on $20,000 bond after appearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Providence.

Police began investigating last summer when Fionghal Solomon MacEoghan, an American citizen living in Ireland, said he suspected that a Russian couple from Warwick had been using his identity.

MacEoghan, who had last visited the United States 15 years ago, became suspicious after he found a woman from Rhode Island with the same last name on Facebook and began messaging with her, according to an affidavit submitted in support of the complaint. He filed a complainy last summer with police in Dublin.

The woman identified herself as Olesya Maceoghan and her husband as Fionghal S. Maceoghan. She told him the name Maceoghan came from her husband’s father and that, coincidentally, MacEoghan and her husband shared the same middle name of Solomon. MacEoghan used the name Solomon on Facebook.

The woman said she was Russian and her husband was half-Russian and half-Irish.

It is not clear from the affidavit why the couple might have targeted MacEoghan’s identity.

A special agent with the U.S. State Department who investigated the alleged identity theft said he found two U.S. passports under the name of Fionghal Solomon MacEoghan. The alleged victim listed one of his middle names as “Shamir” on his application, while the Warwick man who was arrested did not. Both listed the same name and date of birth, but the photographs in both passports showed a different person, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit also includes a blog entry that the woman purportedly posted on a Russian-language website seeking advice in submitting federal immigration paperwork.

“My husband is Russian,” she wrote, “but 12 years ago he receievd asylum and became an American (now he’s changed everything _ his first name, his last name, his life story).”