Identity Thief Attempts to Defend Herself with Oldest Trick in the Book
July 1, 2009 – 8:07 am
We’ve all heard the excuse that “the dog ate my homework.” Now a Arlington, Washington resident is claiming that she had no choice but to commit identity theft and forgery because “the dog ate her checkbook.” Sure, it’s a variation on the classic, but one the police — much like high school teachers — aren’t buying.
According to the woman with the hungry canine, she had to take money from her ex-husband’s bank account because she was out of checks. And if she doesn’t have checks she can’t buy the dog food. And if the dog has no food, he’ll just eat her checks again. It’s a voracious cycle. The ex-hubby got suspicious when he noticed a depletion of funds and called the cops. They sniffed out the money trail which led to utility payments for the ex-wife. When confronted with the charges the thief laid down the “doggy ate” defense. No word on if she was able to do so with a straight face.
Tags: bank account, checkbook, checks, dog ate my homework, forgery, identity theft, money trail, victim
Many times when companies have a “security breach” — meaning a bunch of their client’s confidential information lost or stolen — it’s due to a company laptop disappearing during a conference or being stolen from an office place. Previous examples of this happening would be the California Department of Health (a loss of 21,600 records), Bank of America (18,000 records on one of many occasions) and Fidelity Investments (196,000 records). Keep in mind this in only a few of the hundreds of reported security breaches due to laptops since 2005.
Growing up your parents told you not to talk to strangers. It wasn’t because they thought strangers had your best interests in mind and didn’t want you getting free lollipops and ice cream. It’s because your parents knew there were bad people out there that were out to get you.
With Father’s Day this weekend chances are you’ve already thought up and bought your father his gift. If your dad is anything like mine, that’s an extremely hard process. Fathers are notoriously hard to buy for, so how much more difficult would it be to buy for two, or three or more?
While searching through the web today I came upon this story posted by the Des Moines Register:
There are plenty of bands that want to make it big. However few of them go about it in the way you’re about to read.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that phrase has never been truer than in the case of Susan Shaw. Mrs. Shaw — or as some people knew her Ms. Shaw — is a former Miss Hawaii International beauty queen. Depending on who you ask, she’s also a married woman with two children living in Oahu, Hawaii, or a single woman who is an active dater living in Manhattan Beach, California. There is one thing everyone will agree on however, she’s now been indicted on 122 counts of identity theft, forgery and money laundering and is being held in jail for $1 million bail.
Part of protecting yourself from identity theft online is creating strong passwords for your multiple online accounts. Many times passwords are simple words, dates or sequential numbers that are used because they’re easy to remember. They’re also easy to crack.
Businesses around the world are getting swept up into the new Green way of doing things. And for good reason. In addition to creating good public relations buzz and cutting costs it helps keep waste more manageable. But you can go too far.
“To Tell the Truth” may not be on the air any longer (although it has aired every decade for the past six decades), but the game’s idea is still going strong. For those not familiar with “To Tell the Truth,” it dealt with a panel of celebrities asking questions to decide which person was telling the truth about their identity. One of the three people was sworn to tell the truth. The other two people lied to convince the panel that they were the real person being searched for. When you think of it, it may be the first televised incident of identity theft.
Phishing has recently become a very popular sport on the internet. Although unlike regular anglers who spend their time trying to catch the next big fish, these finaglers are phishing for your credit card, identity information and other personal information. And they’re getting scary good at it.
A Palm Beach County school district cop has been charged with the identity theft of 20 teachers and students. Jonathan E. Kelly, a school district police office for the past six years (and Delray Beach officer from 1997-2000), was using school district computers to gain access to the 20 id theft victims according to Sherriff detectives for the county. It seems that Officer Kelly is what you’d call a “party pooper” as these charges were made based on his involvement of an “organized scheme” of vehicle burglaries. Kelly would break into vehicles and then send the stolen loot to his younger accomplis, who would post the property up for sale on eBay or Craigslist. He’s the kind of guy that give all school cops, from kindergarten to high school, a bad name. 
One of the key elements of stealing someone’s identity is to be able to present proof that you are who you say you are. If the thief can convince the DMV that they are you then getting a license is a snap, which means acquiring loans and credit is even easier. Many identity thieves will get a drivers license of his victim to allow him to go after bigger loans or even finance a home. Stopping them from getting that drivers license would be key to taking down identity theft.
I was reading on the Internet about the porn name game, that has been popular on Twitter, where you answer some questions about yourself and it will generate your porn name for you. HAHA very funny, it’s good for a chuckle and it’s fun to send to your friends to try. However, this particular game was asking you questions like: What’s the name of your first pet? or the name of the first street you lived on? These of course are very popular security questions that people used to verify that you are who you say you are. The security questions often come up when you need your password sent to you or in some cases when you’re logging-in in a new location.
With all the advances in technology in the world you would think that the banking system could figure out a way to prevent skimmer type scams. Placing skimmers over the card slot to record the card information is the oldest trick in the book. Scammers have been doing this for many years, and the banks have not do anything to make their ATMs more secure.
