A young Russian con man was sentenced to at least 3½ years in prison yesterday for a daring identity-theft scam that rooked wealthy Americans out of $1.5 million, and nearly cost a major backer of President Bush $7 million. Operating online from Moscow, Igor Klopov, 24, found many of his targets through the Forbes 400 list. He would target those from states like Texas and California, where property-deed information is available through the Internet.
He would then use that and other online or forged information to impersonate his marks, and plunder their accounts. His scams included assembling a complete identity dossier, with driver's licenses, birth certificates, utility bills, blank checks and brokerage statements. Klopov was foiled by Manhattan prosecutors as he tried to score his biggest payday - $7 million - from of the home-equity credit account of Texas billionaire Charles Wyly Jr., who donated $2 million to Bush in 2000.
Posing as Wyly, Klopov called the billionaire's bank and asked that a new home-equity line checkbook be sent to the home of an accomplice, who then tried to write a $7 million check to a Westchester gold dealer. Klopov was busted in May after coming to New York to claim the gold. "I can assure you I will change my personality," Klopov told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, who answered, "I hope you're sincere about that."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11202008/news/worldnews/russian_jailed_in_id_theft_scam_vs__rich_139658.htm
Robert Friedman's book is the first to describe in detail the Russian mobsters who have established criminal enterprises throughout the world. His prose sometimes makes it sound like a sequel to Pulp Fiction. A Russian killer in Brooklyn murders a boy, he writes, "by picking him up like a ragdoll with one hand and plunging a knife into his heart with the other." But more than any other reporter he reveals how sophisticated, ruthless, rich, and multinational Russian criminals have become.
Among other things, he writes, they have arranged the sale of military helicopters and a submarine for the Colombia drug barons, and they have acquired influence over the American National Hockey League by threatening players from Eastern Europe and Russia and extorting money from them. They have infiltrated the international financial system, rigging share prices and buying banks in Hungary, Israel, and California. Now they are expanding into Nigeria, South Africa, and Australia.
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(Yawn) I guess they'll have to kill me, now that I've outed the scheme. Gosh, I'm so scared (snore). Not to worry. I've notified Scotland Yard, Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the DOJ, CIA, FBI, state, local and county law enforcement----and I named names.........just in case lurkers are taking notes (smirk).