John A. Salazar reports: The Texas Comptroller faces her first legal hurdle after a year-long privacy breach resulted in the online exposure of 3.5 million Texans’ private information. The Texas Civil Rights Project and Austin attorney Jim Harrington filed a petition against Comptroller Susan Combs in District Court. The petition asks for Combs to go on…
Category: U.S.
(follow-up) Former nail salon employee sentenced on credit card fraud
A former employee of a Mason City nail salon has been sentenced to five years in prison on each of two counts of credit card fraud. Nam Huu Nguyen, 37, was charged with three counts of unauthorized use of a credit card and one count of ongoing criminal conduct for allegedly stealing credit card information…
GA: Thousands of personal documents found in Snellville trash
Gracie Bonds Staples reports: Snellville police on Saturday were investigating how thousands of documents containing people’s personal information ended up in a dumpster behind a local strip mall. […] Although police said they didn’t have a lot of information about the documents, the reporter said the paperwork contained credit card information, including three-digit security codes…
Seattle Police Say ‘wardrivers’ Are Hitting Small Businesses
Robert McMillan reports: Seattle police are investigating a group of criminals who they say have been cruising around town in a black Mercedes stealing credit card data by tapping into wireless networks belonging to area businesses. The group has been at it for about five years, according to an affidavit signed by Detective Chris Hansen,…
CA: Central Valley man accused of swiping credit card info
Armenak Avagyan, 28, of Rancho Cordova has been arrested on a five-count federal indictment accusing him of trafficking in counterfeit and fraudulent credit cards, as well as identity theft. The indictment alleges that Mr. Avagyan engaged in a wide-ranging scheme to steal credit card information by using “skimmers” – electronic devices installed in gas station…
Sealed Records Exposed In Major Court Gaffe
In a shocking failure to protect sensitive details about dozens of ongoing criminal investigations, federal officials somehow allowed confidential information about sealed cases to be publicly accessible via the court system’s online lookup service, The Smoking Gun has learned. Over the past nine months, details of 40 separate sealed court applications filed by federal prosecutors…