Kathy Lyn Gray reports:
Two Columbus residents will spend two and half years in federal prison for taking information from the Franklin County Municipal Court website and stealing people’s identities.
Judge Gregory L. Frost sentenced Katura Mozelle, 23, today in U.S. District Court in Columbus on charges of bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. Yesterday he sentenced Kinte Green, 30, on the same charges.
Both pleaded guilty in September to obtaining credit cards in other people’s names and using them to buy about $40,000 in merchandise in 2006 and 2007.
The two took personal information from the Municipal Court website by randomly entering Social Security numbers and, when they found a valid one, using that individual’s date of birth, address and name to apply for credit cards.
Information publicly available on the website was limited after the court found out about the scheme in 2007 following a U.S. Secret Service investigation.
Read more in the Columbus Dispatch.
Although the actual crimes reportedly started in 2006, previous media coverage of this breach starts in July 2007. By December 2007, the Secret Service had identified six suspects. The two defendants sentenced today pleaded guilty in September.