Man sentenced to 5 1/2 years in ChoicePoint identity theft case

KESG NEWS ^ | 03/08/2005 | AP

[APRPEH]

LOS ANGELES A Nigerian national who stole the identities of thousands of people has been sentenced to 5 and a half years in federal prison.

Adedayo Benson was also ordered in Los Angeles court yesterday to pay nearly 155-thousand dollars in restitution to ten financial companies.

He and his sister were arrested in 2002 on charges of tapping into several public records databases, got access to some seven thousand people and used their I-Ds to buy at least a (m) million dollars in merchandise. Authorities say the siblings posed as real estate agents and opened accounts with ChoicePoint, Advantage Financial and Equifax.

Benson's sister was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Their arrest was revealed after a similar security breach was announced by ChoicePoint. The Georgia-based company said last month that the personal data of 145-thousand people may have been compromised, and about 750 of them were defrauded.

[APRPEH]

He got 5 1/2 years for defrauding 750 people. He should have gotten 1 year per person and restitution per person. This sentence amounts to getting away with his crime. The money is still missing and multiple copies of the data is probably stored away for future use or with the likely unknown accomplices. Serious legal reform is needed to stiffen sentences for perpetrators of ID theft.

[Shortwave]

Could not agree with you more. Why can the government protect us for a third world nation like Nigeria? Isn't that their job?

[drt1]

Agree about the too lenient sentences. What about the consumers who were, at the absolute MINIMUM, seriously inconvenienced if not financially damaged.

IMO Choicepoint is a crap Company and I hope they get their butts sued off. Also hope the Choicepoint Execs who sold about 14M$ of stock before this broke are forced to disgorge, are fined and are banned. I won't hold my breath on this eventuality.

[henkster]

You can steal a lot more money with a computer than with a gun and do a lot less time for it.

[litany_of_lies]

This is a different ID theft case that goes back 2-3 years ago, which shows that ChoicePoint hasn't done enough to plug their security holes in all that time.

The perp roundup and prosecutions for the current ID theft case are still in progress.

Agree that the sentence was too light; I think double digits would have been more appropriate plus restitution (dream on). It also looks like any notification to victims didn't occur until the US Attorney made it happen (see below).

This case predated the current larger case and appears not to have been revealed when it happened:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7065902/

(excerpt within required size limit)

ATLANTA - A newly revealed case shows that the vast commercial database of personal information at ChoicePoint Inc. was tapped by identity thieves in 2002 — contradicting a statement by its CEO that a much more recent breach was the first of its kind....

.....(The perps) made 7,000 to 10,000 inquiries on names and Social Security numbers in the database and used some of those identities to commit at least $1 million worth of fraud, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause in Los Angeles said Wednesday.....

.....Asked if ChoicePoint notified the affected consumers in the 2002 incident, Krause said, “I don’t believe so. They certainly did not tell us they were sending people letters. My recollection was a lot of the people didn’t know until we told them they might be a victim.”

A review of archived news releases on ChoicePoint’s Web site could not find a statement on the subject from 2002. It wasn’t clear if the company made a reference to the matter in a prior Securities and Exchange Commission filing. A cursory review of filings found no matching references.

Finally, when is someone going to make the association between lax immigration policy and ID theft?

[APRPEH]

you are quite correct.... thanks for clarifying...