Jessica Willey reports: With the arrest of two men, investigators say they have uncovered a major, statewide identity theft ring. Authorities say it wasn’t hard for the two suspects to find their victims. […] Police say [Geoffrey] Wentzel and Richard Conatser, both ex-cons who know each other from prison, ran a far-reaching identity theft ring….
Category: U.S.
(update) Butte reports spike in identity theft
Melanie Yuill reports: Dozens of identity theft cases are being reported in Butte. Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff John Walsh says there are 82 reports of credit card or debit card fraud in the area. The investigation is being handled by the U.S. Secret Service. Sheriff Walsh says the problem appears to be coming from electronic readers…
(follow-up) Fired Fannie Mae contractor sentenced to 41 mos. for attempting to destroy all data on servers
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz sentenced computer programmer Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, age 36, of Montgomery County, Maryland, today to 41 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for computer intrusion arising from the transmission of malicious script to Fannie Mae’s computer servers. A federal jury convicted Makwana on October 4, 2010….
(follow-up) Massachusetts man pleads guilty to selling and using TSA employees’ identities
A Lynn man pleaded guilty in federal court today to selling and using the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of Transportation Security Administration employees who worked at Logan Airport. Michael Debring, A/K/A Michael Washington, 49, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to conspiracy, misrepresenting a Social Security number with…
Four Texans charged in ID theft scheme involving fingerprint and background security clearance applicants
Four Waco area women have been arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit identity theft in a scheme involving stolen Fingerprint Applicant Services of Texas (FAST) applications required by licensing and certification entities such as the Texas Education Agency. A seven count federal grand jury indictment, returned on Tuesday and unsealed yesterday afternoon, charges 32-year-old Angela Cuellar,…
13 million deviantART e-mail addresses exposed by hackers
Matthew Humphries covers a Silverpop-related deviantART e-mail address hack mentioned previously on this blog: Pre-Christmas 2010 will be remembered as the time when well-known online brands and websites started to fall to hackers. The biggest of them all so far has been Gawker, and we’ve also seen McDonalds have its databases compromised this week. But…