ALBANY COUNTY — Officers from the Bethlehem and Albany police departments — and a number of civilians — had their identities stolen when they used credit cards at the Glenmont Dunkin’ Donuts, according to Commander Adam Hornick, spokesman for the Bethlehem Police, and the Albany County District Attorney’s Office.

On Nov. 13, Michael Harrison, 27, of Albany pleaded guilty on Nov. 13 before Judge Peter A. Lynch in Albany County Court to two counts of first-degree identity theft, a felony, in incidents that occurred more than two years ago, according to a press release from the district attorney’s office.

Heather Orth, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said on Tuesday that prosecutors do not know how Harrison accessed the personal identifying information that he used to commit his crimes, and that his methods were never disclosed to the office.

Hornick, however, said that Harrison was a former employee of the donut shop at 68 Route 9W who stole the personal identifying information of customers by running their credit cards through a “skimmer.” Harrison would take the credit cards out of the customers’ sight to do this, Hornick said, and would later download the information into a computer and re-encode it onto other items containing magnetic strips, such as credit cards or gift cards.

A trial had been due to start on Monday of this week, on charges of second-degree identity theft, a felony, brought in November 2015 by the Bethlehem Police, said Hornick.

“When we arrested him,” Hornick said, “we didn’t find anything except we knew he was involved in using the fake credit cards to make purchases.”

The way that the Bethlehem Police homed in on Harrison, Hornick said, was that they got surveillance footage of the purchases made, and they also looked at the places where the complainants had used their credit cards. “There was a common denominator of this coffee shop,” Hornick said.

He added, “We saw the guy making these purchases, and we said to ourselves, ‘He looks just like the guy from the coffee shop.’”

Customers told police, Hornick said, that the employee at the coffee shop’s cash register took their credit cards out of their sight to ring up their orders.

Before Harrison’s Nov. 10 trial on the charges by Bethlehem Police could begin, a chance arrest on Friday by the Albany Police, following a traffic stop, led to Harrison’s guilty plea that satisfied all of the charges against him.

Albany Police tried to pull Harrison over on Friday when they saw him driving the wrong way down a one-way street, according to Hornick; he then led them on a short chase.

Harrison was discovered to have in his possession a number of items suggesting that he was continuing his crimes despite his earlier arrest and the trial scheduled to start a few days later, Hornick said.

The release from the district attorney’s office says that Harrison was “apprehended” by the Albany Police last Friday and was found to have about $9,000 in cash, multiple forged driver’s licenses, a forged Social Security card, gift cards, and laptops.

“The laptops are forgery devices,” Hornick said.

Harrison was the “orchestrator of an Identity Theft Scheme,” the release said, and, between Aug. 28 and Sept. 14, 2015, used cloned credit cards containing the personal identifying information of “multiple members of the Albany Police Department, the Bethlehem Police Department, and the Police and Fire Federal Credit Union of Philadelphia.”

On Aug. 28, 2015, the release says, Harrison used cloned cards to buy items at the Price Chopper in Colonie and Watervliet and at the Jimmy Jazz store in Guilderland, “stealing money, gift cards, and merchandise in excess of $1,000”; on Sept. 14, it says, he used different cloned cards to make fraudulent purchases totaling over $1,000 at Macy’s in Colonie.

Hornick was asked if police officers’ stereotypical fondness for donuts had led to their victimization. He replied, “No, it’s the 21st Century; cops don’t eat donuts any more, they eat bagels.”

Asked what people can do to avoid this kind of scam, Hornick said they should check their credit-card statements “religiously.”

Customers are usually asked to swipe their own cards, said Hornick, particularly at larger establishments like chain stores. If an employee says he or she needs to take the card to swipe it, customers should ask themselves if the purchase is so important that it’s worth the threat of identity theft, or if the purchase can be made somewhere else instead, Hornick advised.

Harrison will be sentenced on Jan. 8, 2018 and faces a total of five to 10 years in state prison.