Thieves drain Richard Overton's personal bank account Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Richard Overton (KXAN Photo) [ + - ] Video 
 
 AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin supercentenarian and the nation's oldest living man, Richard Overton, is the victim of identity theft that left his bank account empty, family says. 
 
 Someone used his account to purchase savings bonds with Treasury Direct, Richard's cousin Volma Overton Jr. said. He added that the purchases had been happening for a "couple of months." 
 
 "It's a shock, it hurts, it hurts tremendously," he said. 
 
 Volma discovered the account discrepancy when he deposited money into Richard's personal account, then went to the bank to check the balance. All that was in there was the money he had just deposited. 
 
 "I looked at it — what the hell are these debits?" Volma recalled thinking when a bank employee pulled up the statement showing the money went to Treasury Direct. He said the bank has been very helpful and that he's also sent a letter to Treasury Direct. 
 
 "I don't know how they got his social security number and his personal checking account number but those things they have," he said. 
 
 It's not hard to find Richard's name, birthday or even address online. The 112-year-old WWII veteran is a staple of Austin (in fact, his house with party decorations can be seen on Google Maps), and he recently celebrated a birthday in March. 
 
 "We wanted to put word out about them using his name with stolen ID," Volma said. "It might help others realize how vulnerable we all are to this." 
 
 Volma says the family is not sure who's behind this crime. 
 
 "My mind goes up and down the gamut from A to Z of who it could be, but it could be someone in a foreign country," he said. 
 
 When asked his thoughts on the potential of it being someone close to Richard, he said, "It'd be terrible to know somebody who's been that close to him has used him like that." 
 
 Volma didn't specify how much money was in Richard's account, but he said it was a "considerable amount." 
 
 This account is a personal one and is separate from the GoFundMe the family uses to help pay for Richard's care. At $480 per day and nearly $15,000 per month, his round-the-clock care requires consistent fundraising. 
 
 The family notified the police on Thursday afternoon. The Austin Police Department says they're working closely with the Overton family on this matter. ||||| Richard Overton of Austin is the nation’s oldest living U.S. veteran of World War II. He will turn 111 on Thursday. In honor of his big day on May 11, here are 11 things to know about one of Austin’s most-revered residents. 
 
 • Richard Overton was born in Bastrop County on May 11, 1906. Theodore Roosevelt was president and it was less than a month after much of San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake. 
 
 • During World War II, he served in the Pacific Theater with the Army’s all-black 1887th Engineer Aviation Battalion from 1942 to 1945. Overton’s tour of duty included Anguar, Peleliu and Iwo Jima. 
 
 • After the war, he returned to Austin and has lived in the same house ever since. He worked in the furniture business and as a longtime aide at the Capitol, where he handled mail and deliveries. 
 
 • 1960s Austin civil rights leader Volma Overton was his cousin. 
 
 • For years, national and local media outlets called Overton “America’s oldest World War II veteran,” but it turns out they were wrong. At the time, 110-year-old Frank Levingston was not only America’s oldest living veteran, but also America’s oldest man. Levingston held that title, though, for only two weeks: He passed away in May 2016. 
 
 • In December, Overton’s family started a GoFundMe account to pay for his full-time home care. “Richard has outlived all of his closest relatives and is in need of 24/7 home care, ” the GoFundMe site says. “We are asking for donations to keep him living in his home instead of a nursing home.” As of Wednesday, more than $169,000 of the $200,000 goal had been raised. 
 
 • He once said his favorite moment was seeing a black president elected. In his first visit to Washington in 2013, Overton was honored in front of a crowd of 4,000 people by President Barack Obama at a Veterans Day ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery. 
 
 • His favorite foods are catfish and gravy, corn, hamburgers and macaroni and cheese. 
 
 • The Austin City Council in April passed a resolution to give Hamilton Avenue, the street where he lives, the honorary street name Richard Overton Avenue. That recognition has only been given to five other residents, including Willie Nelson and Bettie Naylor, a longtime Austin advocate and lobbyist for women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. 
 
 • On April 7, the VA Austin Outpatient Clinic named a healing garden in Overton’s honor. 
 
 • Overton smokes between 12 to 18 cigars a day. He likes keeping about three cigars in his shirt pocket for easy access.
– Richard Overton is something of a celebrity in Austin, Texas, because the 112-year-old WWII veteran is the oldest living man in America. He now has a new distinction: the oldest American to be robbed of his savings, reports Newsweek. Family members recently learned that an unidentified thief used Overton's identity to buy savings bonds through the government's TreasuryDirect site over a couple of months. It appears the thief set up a fake bank account with Overton's Social Security number and then broke into his personal checking account. "It's a shock, it hurts, it hurts tremendously," says cousin Volma Overton, who discovered the theft. Volma Overton noticed the withdrawals when he went to deposit funds into the account. "I don't know how they got his Social Security number and his personal checking account number but those things they have," he tells KXAN. Overton's experience appears to be an all-too-common case of identity theft, where a thief uses someone else's personal information to apply for credit, file taxes, or, in Overton's case, drain an account. Fortunately, Overton's care, which costs $480 a day, is covered by a separate GoFundMe-linked account. Austin police are working closely with the Overton family to try to track down the culprit. "We wanted to put the word out about them using his name with stolen ID," Volma Overton says. "It might help others realize how vulnerable we all are to this.” Overton, whose age has been verified by the Gerontology Research Group, is something of a character, reports the Dallas Morning News. His favorite pastime is sitting on his porch, where he can be seen waving at honking cars and smoking one of his 12 daily cigars.