The man who admitted using Australian professional golfer Robert Allenby’s identification and credit cards says he found them scattered on the ground near where bystanders found Allenby drunk and disoriented in January.
“Kapiolani and Piikoi Street. It (the cards) was like in the gutter — not in the gutter, but right off the curb,” Owen Harbison told Hawaii Paroling Authority Board Chairman Bert
Matsuoka earlier this month.
Allenby told Honolulu police that he had been drinking at Amuse wine bar on Kapiolani Boulevard on Jan. 16 when he was abducted, thrown into the trunk of a car and dumped at a park 6-1/2 miles away. He was in Honolulu for the Sony Open in January and had just missed the weekend cut.
Two people told police they found Allenby on the ground across the street from the wine bar, and one said Allenby injured himself when the golfer passed out and hit his head on a rock. Allenby said in a news conference that he didn’t remember what happened to him during the roughly
2-1/2 hours between the time he left the bar and when the bystanders found him. He said his initial account was from one of the bystanders who helped him.
Harbison, 33, is serving a five-year prison sentence for attempted theft, identity theft and unauthorized possession of Allenby’s confidential personal information. He pleaded guilty to the charges in June in a deal with the prosecutor.
The parole board told Harbison he must serve at least two years of his sentence behind bars before he is eligible for release, which makes him eligible for parole in February 2017.
Harbison said he used the cards to buy items he believed he could sell quickly for cash.
The state says Harbison used Allenby’s American Express, Bank of America and Huntington National Bank credit cards to purchase nearly $20,000 worth of clothes, liquor, boxes of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and a watch. Harbison also purchased high-dollar-value gift cards from Victoria’s Secret, Zumiez, Walgreens, 7-Eleven and ABC Stores, the state said.
Harbison said it was only after police arrested him for a probation violation when he realized that the name on the cards was the same as the person he saw on television claiming to have been drugged, kidnapped and robbed. Harbison was on probation for a 2013 drug promotion conviction.
