U.S. Charges 3 in Massive ID Fraud (LARGEST ID THEFT IN HISTORY)

ap via abc news ^ | 11/25/2002 | ap

[TLBSHOW]

U.S. Charges 3 in Massive ID Fraud

U.S. Charges 3 in Largest Identity-Theft Ring in American History; Info Taken From Over 30,000

N E W Y O R K, Nov. 25 — Federal authorities charged three men with orchestrating a massive identity-theft scheme in which credit information was stolen from more than 30,000 victims.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey said the arrests announced Monday mark the largest identity theft case in U.S. history, with initial losses pegged at $2.7 million and growing.

"With a few keystrokes, these men essentially picked the pockets of tens of thousands of Americans and, in the process, took their identities, stole their money and swiped their security," Comey said.

More than 15,000 credit reports were stolen using passwords belonging to Ford Motor Credit Corp. to access information from Experian, a commercial credit history bureau, officials said.

Authorities say the scheme began about three years ago when Philip Cummings, a help-desk worker at a computer software company, agreed to give an unidentified co-conspirator the passwords and codes for downloading consumer credit reports.

The FBI also charged Linus Baptiste and Hakeem Mohammed with roles in the far-flung fraud.

Cummings was paid roughly $30 for each report, and the information was then passed on to at least 20 individuals who then set out to make money from the stolen information.

Victims have reported losing money from their bank accounts, seeing their credit cards hit with unauthorized charges, and having their identities assumed by strangers.

Baptiste allegedly downloaded hundreds of credit reports with Cummings' access passwords. Mohammed has pleaded guilty to mail fraud for making changes to individual credit accounts.

[TLBSHOW]

BUMP

[LibWhacker]

Hmmm . . . I wonder if the fraud was restricted to Ford customers? It sounds to me like Experian passwords belonging to a few authorized Ford employees were compromised; i.e., if you got one of those passwords and you could log onto the Experian website and check the credit history of anybody in the US, whether they were a customer of Ford or not.

[Madame Dufarge]

Great, just great. I never get a break.

Just when the guy was going to transfer millions of dollars into my account - this happens!

Hakeem Mohammed, Permanent Secretary for the Nigerian Department of Commerce.

[struwwelpeter]

I quit PayPal a year ago, and recently received an email stating that they voided a transaction because my bank account information was not up to date.

Word to the wise.

[lelio]

I have a Ford Credit account (and a Washington Mutual bank account too, which is listed as one of the things the thieves were looking for) and you HAVE to give them your SSN in order to get a loan from them. Yes, I should of just cancelled my account with them when that came up.
I'm going to see if I can have my SSN removed as my account number. Having that as an identifier is just asking for trouble.

[dennisw]

They immigrate here to steal from us. To defraud our system.

[TLBSHOW]

Mohammed and the cult of Islam is not Peace!

[Mark17]

Is it time to bring back the public gallows?

I agree, but unfortunately, with today's justice system, they will get 6 months in jail, with time off for good behavior. They will be back on the streets in no time. Maybe you can tell I have little faith in the justice system. I hope I am wrong, but we have all seen it before.

[LibWhacker]

'Yer makin' me nervous, stru! I've had a PayPal account for years that I've never done anything with. But I have been thinking about closing it just to keep them out of my pocket.

Then over this past weekend, my wife got all excited about buying something on eBay, and because I had forgotten my password with PayPal, opened another account with them using a second checking account we have with another bank.

Now the buggers have electronic access to two of our checking accounts!! Brrrrrr . . .

And I just read something on the web about PayPal arbitrarily "freezing" accounts.

[11B3]

Back when I used banks I started a PayPal account too. Now, since I don't have a bank account I can't add any funds to it so it sits idle. Yes, I lose some of the conveniences that you get with credit cards, but try to track me. With the new Homeland Dept, joining the cash economy is something that all of you should consider - even though we have nothing to fear from legitimate investigators, any info you leave out there today about yourself can come back to haunt you. In spades.

[AmericaUnited]

30,000 is certainly a lot but I remember a year or two ago when some hacker ripped off 200,000 credit card #'s from an e-commerce site.

[Woodstock]

This happens in health care fraud every day. Someone sells the list for cheap and the bad guys make a mint.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

What we really need here is a "Master File" assigning a unique and permanent number to each and every person on earth.

I don't know if it would work. Yesterday, in Columbus Ohio, about 10,000 screaming banshees all claimed that they were number one. They punctuated this by torching cars, throwing rocks at policemen, and generally behaving like thugs. They actually have made me root for Miami in the championship game.

[nanny]

[Then over this past weekend, my wife got all excited about buying something on eBay, and because I had forgotten my password with PayPal, opened another account with them using a second checking account we have with another bank. Now the buggers have electronic access to two of our checking accounts!! Brrrrrr . . . And I just read something on the web about PayPal arbitrarily "freezing" accounts.]

I don't know about freezing accounts - but I do know I have been getting bogus emails supposedly from Paypal attempting to 'update' my account. They asked for usual info - ID, password, then SS#, and on to bank account number and PIN #.

There was a post on here recently about the Ebay scam, doing the same. They both look pretty convincing and some were fooled, but I knew I had not given either Ebay or Paypal my SS#, initially, so I was skeptical then.

I have my Paypal linked to a checking account we really never use. I was not about to give them access to my regular checking account. Of course, they do have a CC on file. It is getting scary, isn't it.

[Frank_2001]

Good question, and what about funding that other Mohammed named John??? The Religion of Peace (why don't we just type ROP to save time;) strikes again!

[lizma]

About ten years ago we had an unauthorized charge of $5000 at a gold or maybe a coin store in London. Called the credit card company and all they said was don't worry about it.

Today if we use the credit card at the same gas staion twice in one day, they call us to make sure it was us making the purchase.

[SR71A]

There are times when I wish I was a tort lawyer. Why is it that Experian didn't notice that a help desk jockey accessed 15,000 credit reports? Did that match up with his trouble calls? Of course not.

Simple auditing would have prevented a great deal of this fraud. Hopefully for Experian, a real tort lawyer won't think the same thing and start a class action lawsuit for a couple of billion dollars.

[struwwelpeter]

Last year PayPal froze me out of over $2500 just before Christmas - it took 2 months and the California and Minnesota state attorneys general to get it back. I wrote up the particulars on this forum and got a lot of "I've had PayPal for five minutes and have never had a problem" type replies.

If someone put a gun to my head and said use PayPal again, I'd still have to think long and hard about it. There's nothing you can't do with a credit card that is not safer and easier.