The fast spread of credit cards is based on one main assumption: most people are honest. Last week Joseph Robert Miraglia, 19, a $73-a-week office clerk from Manhattan's Lower East Side, showed what can happen when the assumption happens to be dead wrong. With a credit card and rubber checks cashed on the basis of credit-card identification, Miraglia told police he ran up $10,000 in hotel and travel bills and general high living in the U.S., Canada and Cuba in less than a month. Said Miraglia: "I always wanted to see the world, and I like nice things."
The ease of getting nice things on the cuff first became plain to him when he got a limited credit card issued by the Chase Manhattan Bank. It permitted him to charge up to $300 in New York stores, pay it back at the rate of $25 a month. Last August he overdrew by $73, and the bank put a stop on further debt. Meanwhile, with his Chase card as a recommendation, Miraglia applied to the Diners' Club, American Express and Conrad Hilton's Carte Blanche for good-anywhere credit cards. Diners' and American Express turned him down; Carte Blanche sent him a card.
Mink-Stole Gift. When it arrived, Miraglia headed for the Waldorf, ran up a $73.33 overnight bill (champagne, breakfast in his room). From there, using $57 of his own money, he bought a round-trip air ticket to Hilton's Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, in three days proceeded to charge nearly $300 in hotel, restaurant and car rental bills. As a parting gift for a blonde who had done the town with him, he presented her with a $675 mink stole — using the card, of course.
At the beginning, Miraglia told police, he always felt that he would spend only what he later could repay. "But I got in so deep I couldn't stop. I lost count of what I was spending." From Montreal he flew back to New York's Statler Hilton, used the card to cash checks, then went on to Las Vegas. There he shot dice at the same table with Frank Sinatra, who said: "Let the kid roll." He rolled and won $400, flew back to Manhattan and checked into the Henry Hudson Hotel in a $60-a-day room. He engaged it for a month to get the $30-a-day economy rate.
With the Henry Hudson as his base, he really took to heart the Carte Blanche brochure: "Carte Blanche . . . is a credential that you are accustomed to the very finest service and attention." He ordered eight custom-tailored silk shirts, four pairs of slacks, two sports jackets, an evening outfit of tuxedo, patent leather shoes, soft black hat and walking stick. To hold his finery, he charged two pieces of luggage, flew to Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hotel and took a $21-a-day room. There, the first suspicious glance was cast at his credit card. The hotel asked for it "to check" did not give it back.
All a "Mistake." Undisturbed by this, Miraglia went to Havana, checked into the Habana Hilton. On his story that he had "lost" his credit card, proved by showing a shoe store receipt with the credit-card number, he cashed $850 in checks to cover his hotel bills, and flew back to New York. While trying to cash a $120 check at the Plaza, he was recognized, arrested, booked for grand larceny.