ID thief tries to have informant wacked for testifying

A guy steals personal identity information, proceeds to empty victims bank accounts, gets caught & places a hit out on a witness. When that doesn't proceed as planned, he places a second hit on the original hitman, all within jail.

The guy was caught red handed in the process of transferring $440,000 from one victims account to his paypal as cops busted through his door. He then attempted to elude police by jumping off his buildings roof onto another building 1 floor below. Needless to say, he was caught.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/pressroom/pr2009/142.html

10 Bizarre cases of identity theft

These examples are a little extreme but they do represent some of the lengths that people are willing to pursue when it comes to identity theft.

Some examples are:
* a guy who became a doctor

* a 33 yr old mother who wanted to go back to high school & become a cheerleader

*"Neighbors from hell" who took around 30 different identities to maintain their lifestyle

* a guy arrested for stealing his own identity after faking his death

Proceed to Listverse for all 10 stories

http://listverse.com/2009/09/05/10-bizarre-cases-of-identity-theft/

T'is the season....

Being wired can unknowingly open oneself to identity & physical theft

With the proliferation of networking & social services (twitter, facebook, myspace, etc...) people can unknowingly provide a thief with all the info they need to steal a person blind. The internet never forgets. Something you mention casually may piece together a complete picture of your life over the course of a year.

For instance, the iPhone & new "droid" phones have built in GPS/Geotagging features . The holidays provide opportunity for people to take lots of photos of Christmas presents, family functions, home interiors & so on. Combine that with the instant upload features of Twitter or Flickr & you have just shown the world that you have a 50" TV hanging on your wall along with your address where it can now be picked up. Should you decide to ever leave the house for a vacation or,.....uh,...... ever, you have just shown that your house may be empty for them to come by & pay your valuables a visit.

With the holidays being in full swing there will be plenty of digital locations where a person may post something about their family online. It can be easy to provide family members names, locations, birthdays, pet names, favorite cars, etc.... giving a complete guide to all of the favorite security answers that may be asked should one forget their password to an online account. Remember, this could be something that you may not even do. Your nephew, niece, cousin, etc... who visits may even do this not realizing the implications of their actions. It is very simple to associate family members making it childsplay to get all the info a thief needs to access your online identy & claim your physical one as well.

http://www.augmentedplanet.com/2009/11/do-you-care-about-privacy/

http://www.mobile-spy.com/

http://iphone.iusethis.com/app/gpstracker

Identity thieves can buy bank account details lawfully from ebay, craigslist, etc...

Anyone has the ability to purchase used ATM's from another individual with no regulation whatsoever. Most of the time these ATM's still contain all of the users bank info for at least the past 6 months. The short story is that for as little as $500 a person can lawfully purchase thousands of credit/debit numbers, personal info, bank account numbers & pins for thousands of users.
http://realtysecurity.com/blog/2009/11/17/i-bought-an-atm-off-craigslist-for-750-w1000-ccs-on-it-yup/

Hancock Fabrics customers in several states experience ATM banking theft

Customers in several states who shopped at Hancock Fabrics have had their bank accounts emptied via ATM withdrawls. It is presumed that everything originated in Wisconsin however, people as far away as California & Missouri have had their checking accounts emptied sometimes, months after shopping.
http://www.kmov.com/home/b-Developing-b-More-people-coming-forward-in-money-scam-69902407.html

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2009/10/17/news/local/doc4ad8dd6fe28ef768993333.txt

Medicare mails postcards with SS#'s

An insurance mailer contracted by Medicare has mailed out postcards with recipients social security numbers in plain sight. They have offered credit monitoring for 1 year but after that, people are on their own.
http://news.aol.com/article/insurance-mailer-exposes-80000-medicare/775071