The New York State Police arrested Jerome D. Hightower, age 27, of Rochester, NY, on July 26, 2026, following an investigation into a fraudulent gift card purchases at Kinney Drugs in the village of Lyons.<\/p>\n
An investigation determined that on July 21, 2026, Hightower entered Kinney Drugs, located at 20 Forgham St., and fraudulently purchased 15 Visa gift cards totaling $7,619.25 by manually entering stolen credit card information into the payment terminal. Store employees were later notified by loss prevention that transactions were fraudulent.<\/p>\n
Investigators also learned Hightower attempted a similar fraudulent transaction at the same store on July 11, 2026, but the transaction was declined.<\/p>\n
On July 26, 2026, troopers responded to Kinney Drugs after receiving a report that Hightower had returned to the store. While being interviewed by troopers, he attempted to identify himself using another name and date of birth. He was identified by employees, taken into custody without incident, and charged with:\u00a0
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Attempted Grand Larceny 3rd degree (E felony)\u00a0
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Petit Larceny (A misdemeanor)
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0False Personation (B misdemeanor)<\/p>\n
Hightower was transported to SP Lyons, where he was processed. He taken to Wayne County Jail for CAP arraignment where he was released on his own recognizance. He is scheduled to reappear in Lyons Town Court on August 4, 2026.<\/p>\n
Following his arraignment, Hightower was turned over to the Monroe County Sheriff\u2019s Office on an active warrant.<\/p>\n
This investigation remains ongoing.\u00a0
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York State Police arrested Jerome D. Hightower, age 27, of Rochester, NY, on July 26, 2026,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-307998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}