Cal Fizer, a Detroit resident who used fake 1-800 numbers to steal hundreds of credit card numbers and other personal identity information, has been sentenced to 70 months’ imprisonment on the charges of credit card fraud, mail fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The sentencing was announced (pdf) by Terrence Berg, United States Attorney for the…
Author: Dissent
Prospects Gloomy for Texas Data Security Bill
Jim Rubenstein of Credit Union Times reports that it’s unlikely that the Texas legislature will pass an ambitious data security bill before the current legislative session ends on June 1. H.B. 345 and the companion S.B. 327 have support from the financial sector and the state’s Attorney General, but have been strongly opposed by retailers…
AU: Security breach over SA secret files
Hendrik Gout of The Independent Weekly reports: Secret police intelligence so sensitive that people named in the documents can’t even see it appears to have been released into the public domain, prompting calls for an Anti-Corruption Branch investigation. The top-secret files may contain unproven allegations and name people who have not necessarily been convicted of…
PA: Ex-employee of Colonial Penn charged in ID-theft scam
Michael Hinkelman of the Philadelphia Daily News reports that Lisa Bryant Nelson, a former Colonial Penn Life Insurance Co. employee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of using company computers to steal personal and bank-account information of customers who also had accounts with Citizens Bank, M&T Bank and Wachovia Bank. Over 120…
California fines Kaiser Permanente for violating Suleman's privacy
Raquel Maria Dillon of the Associated Press reports that California has fined Kaiser Permanente $250,000 because hospital employees inappropriately accessed medical records for octuplet mother Nadya Suleman when she was a patient at the Bellflower facility. Although the fine is the first one passed under California’s new law boosting medical privacy, it is not the…
Ca: Subway Restaurant customers become fraud victims
The Branford Expositor reports that about 1,250 debit cards were skimmed at a Subway Restaurant, over a period of about six weeks from March 25 to May 4. Over 200 of the skimmed debit cards have been used for unauthorized financial transactions.