Police Say Woman Racked Up $8,100 on Grandma's Credit Card

A McKees Rocks woman is accused of taking out a credit card in her 81-year-old grandmother’s name and racking up more than $8,100 in less than two weeks.

say 36-year-old Velvet Dvorak-Thomas used the woman’s identity to sign up for a PNC Signature credit card with a credit limit of $17,500 in April without her grandmother knowing.

The grandmother, who lives in Heidelberg, said she received a letter from PNC on April 18 that her address had been changed to a McKees Rocks residence, but she didn’t “understand exactly what was going on” until later, police said. It wasn’t until she received a credit card statement in May that she learned her granddaughter had used her account to make $8,157 in charges, police said.

The grandmother contacted PNC and confronted her granddaughter, who allegedly admitted to the fraud.

Heidelberg police Chief Vernon Barkley said PNC agreed to remove the charges from the grandmother’s account if she agreed to press charges against Dvorak-Thomas. That prompted Barkley to filed charges of theft, forgery, identity theft and access device fraud against Dvorak-Thomas on May 21.

Barkley said Dvorak-Thomas used the card at “various businesses and services” in the first week of holding the card.

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