Peggy O’Hare reports: Police have busted a Houston-based identity theft ring that victimized 457 people and 83 businesses scattered across 25 states, investigators announced today. The scheme worked by stealing people’s personal checks, then looking up their driver’s license numbers in an on-line database. Theft ring participants would then use fake Texas driver’s licenses featuring…
Category: U.S.
Trial set in botnet hacking conspiracy
Thomas James Frederick Smith, 21, and David Anthony Edwards, 20, have been charged in a federal indictment with conspiring to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and commit computer fraud. The indictment was announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Edwards, of Mesquite, Texas, and Smith, most recently of…
Merrill Lynch sues three alleged phishers
Courthouse News reports: Three people posing as Merrill Lynch recruiters conned job seekers into revealing their bank account numbers by claiming they needed the information to make direct deposits into their accounts, Merrill Lynch claims in Federal Court. Merrill Lynch says the three people “hatched a nefarious plot” and created the domain email address “merrilllynchcareers.com”…
Postal inspectors uncover MassMutual customer data during ID theft investigation
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (“MassMutual”) recently discovered that an insider had printouts of customer data that might have been used for fraudulent purposes. In a notification letter [pdf] to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office dated September 8, MassMutual Financial Group reported that they had been advised on August 3 by the U.S. Postal…
Downeast Energy Suffers Security Breach
Downeast Energy in Brunswick [Maine] says that the company is the victim of a computer breach that led to unauthorized access to one of its bank accounts at Key Bank. The personal information of as many as 800 Downeast customers may have compromised as well. Downeast says the perpetrators succeeded in transferring funds out of…
Man gets 15 years for leading ID-theft ring
Adam Lynn reports: Convicted identity thief Larry Alan Hayes asked a judge for a second chance. What Hayes really wanted was an eighth one, and Pierce County Superior Court pro-tem Judge Eric Schmidt wasn’t inclined to give it to him. […] A jury in June convicted the 41-year-old man of leading organized crime, six counts…