Don Thompson of the Associated Press reports that Jerry Van Le has been accused of using stolen Social Security numbers from about 25 people to make purchases and then selling the personal information to over 2,000 other individuals in a multimillion-dollar identity theft ring. Le reportedly used his role as a mortgage broker to obtain information from people who had no credit history.
According to an affidavit, employees at Highway Furniture/New York Funding Group Inc. in New York used the stolen Social Security numbers to create fake credit histories that helped with the purchases.