We’ve seen this exact same scheme before, but this case is in Florida. I wonder how many other cases there are like this out there that we haven’t found out about yet:
A Miami-Dade Police Department Officer, Rafael Duran, 43, of Miami, has been arrested for participating in a fraud scheme. His arraignment is scheduled for April 16, 2015.
Duran is charged, by indictment, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud offenses, punishable by up to twenty years in prison.
According to allegations contained in the indictment, Duran participated in a scheme to provide false police reports to individuals operating credit repair businesses. A co-conspirator would provide Duran with the personal identifying information of credit business customers. Duran would create false police reports, using the customers’ personal identifying information. The police reports would falsely represent that the customers had reported to the Miami-Dade Police Department facts consistent with having been victims of identity theft. Duran would cause the false police reports to become official records of the Miami-Dade Police Department. A member of the conspiracy, associated with the credit businesses, would cause the false police reports created by Duran to be transmitted to credit reporting agencies in order to induce the removal of negative items from the credit histories of the alleged victims identified in the false police reports. Duran created the false police reports in order to promote the success of the credit businesses and in return would receive payment and other things of value from his co-conspirators, including credit repair services.
An indictment is only an accusation and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
SOURCE: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida
Question for the class: should we consider this an insider hacking breach? It’s exceeding authorized access to create false records, corrupt a database, right?