UIC Grad Student Charged With Stealing Identities In Yearslong Schemes

GLENCOE, IL — A Chicago man is accused of using stolen identities to rent apartments, pay phone and television bills, and rack up thousands of dollars in credit card charges at a furniture store, for trampoline park passes and to pay for a billboard.

Darrius Summeries, 33, is charged with three counts of identity theft, two counts of forgery, one count of aggravated identity theft and one misdemeanor count of resisting arrest by the Glencoe detective who obtained a search warrant earlier this month for one of the apartments he rented using the identity of a man from the small St. Claire County village of Dupo, records show.

Summeries first rented an apartment on East 44th Street on Chicago's South Side back in March 2020 using fake identification in the Dupo man's name, according to Assistant State's Attorney Nic Attia.

After about three months, he stopped paying the $1,600 a month rent, the prosecutors said. And when the landlord took at look at the interior of the apartment in July, she found extensive damage, which, when combined with the unpaid rent, cost the landlord about $18,000.

As a result, the landlord filed a lawsuit against the Southern Illinois man whose identity Summeries allegedly stole. After the man notified the landlord that he was not the person who rented the apartment, the landlord hired a private investigator and identified Summeries from his registered license plate. Reports were filed with Chicago police in the fall of 2021, the prosecutor said.

Summeries then rented another apartment, this one on West 31st Street, using the Dupo man's in January 2021, once again using a photo of a fake driver's license with his image and the victim's personal identifying information.

In August 2021, a Lake in the Hills man learned that someone had racked up over $900 in charges for Dish Network satellite television, as well as an additional overdue AT&T bill, according to the prosecutor. Summeries later allegedly used a credit card in the man's name to clean the West 31st Street apartment.

In November 2022, a Glencoe resident was contacted by staff of an Ace Hardware in Palos Hills, who told him that a snowblower he had purchased online was ready for pickup, authorities said.

Investigators later determined that Summeries had purchased the item using a credit card in teh Glencoe man's name, but when he showed up and tried to pick it up with only a photograph of a driver's license, store employees refused to give it to him, Attia said at Summeries' initial court appearance.

Glencoe Det. Ryan McEnerney learned that Summeries had racked up about $3,500 in fraudulent charges using the resident's identity. He made purchases at Nick's Furniture, Reinke Supply Company and purchased multiple passes to the SkyZone in Orland Park using the Glencoe man's name. Because the Glencoe resident is over the age of 60, Summeries is charged with aggravated identity theft for this offense.

Summeries also spent $350 to purchase a billboard using the Glencoe man's name. No further details about the nature of the billboard were available from police.

"This is a complex case involving numerous victims and crimes in many different jurisdictions," Glencoe Public Safety Director Cary Lewandowski told Patch. "Our detectives are working with various local and federal agencies as they continue the investigation, which may identify additional victims and lead to additional criminal charges."

Early this month, investigators got a search warrant for the West 31st Street apartment and showed up on the morning of Jan. 10. Officers reported hearing multiple people moving around the apartment but no one answered the door, the prosecutor said.

"A person wearing only a t-shirt and underwear, later identified as [Summeries], was apprehended by perimeter units after fleeing the building via the rear stairway," Attia said.

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The court-authorized search of the apartment turned up numerous computers, tablets, cell phones and electronic equipment capable of re-encoding credit cards, as well as mail addressed to other identity theft victims, according to the prosecutor.

Summeries is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, according to his court-appointed attorney Greg Kobus, who said Summeries has an undergraduate degree in computer science or an engineering-related field.

At the time of his arrest, Summeries was on felony probation for identity theft and theft in Tennessee, according to court officials. He also has Cook County convictions for identity theft, multiple counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, a attempted forgery conviction in Nevada, another conviction for attempted financial institution fraud and three bond forfeiture warrants. He was sentenced to probation in each case, according to Attia.

Cook County Associate Judge Anthony Calabrese said it appeared that Summeries was managed to avoid prison time despite a lengthy record of criminal convictions.

"We have some multiple occasions where [Summeries] is basically living his life through fraud," Calabrese said, noting that he was allegedly living off the hard work and credit other other people, who ended up with lawsuits filed against them, damaged credit rating and other financial losses.

The allegations are "over-the-top," Calabrese said, ranging from theft of essentials to more extravagant purchases, like passes to SkyZone "or creating a billboard on somebody else's dime," he said.

"It's an extraordinary thing — but I suppose if ones gone this long without being apprehended, one becomes more emboldened over time," the judge said.

Calabrese ordered Summeries to be held unless he can come up with the $25,000 cash portion of his bond. He remained in custody Friday, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. He is due back in court in Skokie Feb. 7.

"I guess I see how we get to this point if every time you're arrested and charged you keep getting felony probation over and over again," the judge told Summeries last week at his initial bond hearing. "I can see why one would continue to commit these kind of offenses."