Man suspected of
stealing identities of
almost 90 MLB
players
Posted: Wednesday Dec 20, 2006 6:09 PM
CHICA GO (AP) -A 38-year-old Chicago man was charged with stealing
the identities of 27 Lake County residents, and is suspected of stealing
the identities of almost 90 baseball players, according to Lake County
authorities.
David Dright faces 27 counts of identity theft involving "ordinary
people'' who live in Lake County, said Patricia Fix, chief deputy of the
high-tech crime unit for the Lake County state's attorney's office. A
search of Dright's home Tuesday turned up personal information on
retired and current ball players, including Chicago White Sox slugger Jim
Thome and New York Mets outfielder Moises Alou, Fix said.
Immigrant raids stir
identity-theft issues
Firms vulnerable to
workers using stolen
information
By Ameet Sachdev and John
Schmeltzer
Published December 14, 2006
Federal officials said the arrests of 1,200 undocumented
immigrants at meatpacking plants Tuesday highlight a new twist
on employment fraud: individuals without valid immigration
status buying identity documents of real U.S. citizens.
And that leaves companies vulnerable, even if they make a
good-faith effort to comply with immigration laws, business
groups said Wednesday.
Julie Myers, chief of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement
bureau of the Department of Homeland Security, said
Wednesday that authorities are no longer just dealing with
phony Social Security numbers and fake visas.
"Illegal aliens are buying genuine documents with real
identities--identities of unwitting U.S. citizens," Myers said at a
news conference in Washington. "Combating this new and
burgeoning problem is one of our highest priorities."
More than 1,200 people were picked up in the six-state raid,
called Operation Wagon Train, at plants owned by Swift & Co.,
one of the world's largest meat processors. Most were arrested
on administrative violations for allegedly not having proper
documentation. But 65 face criminal charges, including identity
theft, and that number could increase, said Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Stealing kids' futures:
Child identity theft
often starts close to
home
January 07, 2007 12:00 am
By Abigail Goldman , Scripps Howard
The crime began with a phone call: Jason's ex-wife, was dialing in to
check on the couple's 5-year-old son, who was home with his father
when the phone rang. Oddly, the boy's name flashed across the
caller ID window, but Jason thought nothing of it.
Mistake.
Today, three years later, the Las Vegas father recognizes this call as
his first taste of something truly dismal: His ex-wife, who had filed
for bankruptcy, used their child's name and Social Security number
to buy a cell phone. Then she
stopped paying the bill.
Jason, who told his story to a Las Vegas newspaper on the
condition that his last name not be published, found out
when his son turned 6 and received a credit agency
collection notice for $344.
As identity theft goes, the scam was particularly nefarious -
abusing the name of your own child. Unfortunately, children
are increasingly becoming victims of this kind of id;
entity theft.
Identity Theft is Everywhere
By Syndicated News
January 2nd, 2007
Identity Theft
Nightmare Soars
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), over a quarter of a million
people filed complaints of identity theft during 2005.
And it’s a trend that seems to be on the upswing. For some identity-theft
victims, their lives don’t go back to normal for years. Mary Polise of Bergen
County, NJ, knows firsthand, because she’s been trying to get her life in order
for years after being the victim of identity theft. For her, a stolen social
security number has turned into a nightmare one could only imagine.
“I’ve done everything I can think of, but it seems there is no legislation to
protect us Americans from this and none of the agencies in charge will help
me,” says Polise. “I went to the local police, hired a detective, and had a
background check done on my identity. My life has been turned upside down
and those in charge see me as a bother.”
Medical identity theft can
kill you
By Amy Buttell Crane
Financial identity theft might wound your wallet, but medical identity theft can kill you.
Medical identity theft occurs when criminals obtain information such as a health insurance
identification or Social Security number and use it to get health care or to obtain reimbursement
from insurers and others for false claims. That means your medical history and health care
records can include someone else's information. This can be life threatening: for example,
causing a transfusion of the wrong blood type.
"People can die from this crime," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy
Forum, a privacy rights group. "It is a potentially huge issue. It's an incredibly intransigent
problem and victims are finding that they have to sue health care providers to have their
records corrected."
As paper-based, medical-record-keeping systems evolve toward electronically based
interconnected systems, the potential for catastrophic errors is on the rise.
ID THEFT 101: BEAUTY CONS
HER WAY ONTO IVYS' ROLLS AS
AN ED. RINGER
By LUKAS I. ALPERT
January 8, 2007 -- A cunning co-ed con artist was able to dupe some of the nation's top universities
- including Harvard and Columbia - into granting her admission by stealing other people's identities,
including that of a woman who has been missing for more than seven years, investigators have
discovered.
Esther Elizabeth Reed, 28, managed to attend Columbia University as a graduate student for two
years under the name Brooke Henson before investigators caught wind of the scam last summer.
5
