Police: Couple thought 911 calls could eliminate credit card debt

Authorities say a South Jersey couple spent months making 911 calls about false incidents at their home, and they did it as part of a plan to evade credit card debt.

Mount Laurel police say Kevin Clark and Michelle Wolf told responding officers "they did not make the calls and that they believed they were being targeted by some unknown person for an unknown reason."

But, "Investigators determined the calls were placed using a cell phone that had no subscriber information associated with it; however the phone was still capable of making 911 calls."

In the past week, police say "the nature of the calls began to become more serious and more frequent. The caller reported fires, pipe bombs in the area and other crimes in progress like burglaries and robberies."

Thursday, police executed a search warrant and arrested the couple.

According to police, "The motive for this bizarre crime appears to be financial."

They said "Wolf has an extreme amount of credit card debt. The tale they hoped to weave was that Wolf's identity had been stolen and the identity thieves were now targeting her with malicious 911 calls requiring the police to respond and excessive fraudulent credit card use. The couple believed their 911 calls would be untraceable since the cell phone was old and had no subscriber information associated with it. They also seemed to have hoped the credit card debt could be eliminated by the false claim of identity theft.

Police concluded, "They were wrong."

Clark was charged with seven counts of terroristic threats; 15 counts of false public alarms involving bomb threats, hostage situations, or person armed with a deadly weapon; and 58 counts of misuse of the 911 system.

Wolf was charged with conspiracy to commit the same crimes.