Total Bankruptcy

If someone calls you and says you missed your date for jury duty and could be arrested as a result, hang up the phone. According to various postings on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's website, this is a scam. It works like this:

1. The scammer calls your house and tells you that you missed your jury duty date and there is a warrant out for your arrest.

2. The scammer then tells you can avoid arrest with a small fine, payable by credit card.

3. The scammer will then get your credit card information and any other personal information he can (account number, card number, social security number) from you.

4. The scammer will use your credit information to open new credit cards, apply for loans, and engage in other forms of identity theft.

The FBI notes that any legitimate employees of the U.S. court system will almost always contact you by mail, and will NEVER ask for sensitive information over the phone.

For details about what to do if you have been victimized by this scam, follow the link above to the FBI's website.

Cyberthieves broke into the job search site Monster.com’s database and stole the personal data of at least 1.3 million people. According to the USA Today, Monster released a statement saying it had shut down the “rogue server” being used to steal data. Monster said only names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses were found were stored on the infiltrated server.

To target Monster, thieves put out emails and pop-up adverts pitching job-finding services to get victims to click on a false web link. Clicking popped up in an error message and turned over control of the victim’s computer to the intruder. Infected computers are incorporated into a “zombie” network to spread more email spam, deliver more infections, and steal more data. All of the information typed into the victim’s computer, including user names and passwords for online accounts get collected.

Thieves apparently used stolen data to log into a job recruiter’s Monster account and order contact information for 1.3 million users. The data was used to target the Monster.com users with email scams touting Monster’s services.

David Cole, director of Symantec Security Response team, said “The advice to just stay out of the dark corners of the Internet really doesn't hold water any more. The bad guys are going to legitimate websites and attacking people.”

TJX Companies, the parent company of TJ Maxx, told the Boston Globe that its costs for the largest data breach in corporate history have reached $256 million. The costs include fixing the company’s computer system, dealing with lawsuits and investigations, and other claims stemming from the theft.

Data thieves broke into TJX’s computer system and stole credit and debit card numbers for more than 45 million customers. Authorities say some of the numbers have been used to make fake credit cards that have been used to buy expensive electronics from Wal-Mart and other retailers.

Three months ago, the retailer estimated the damage to amount to only $25 million. Several analysts say TJX’s costs could run as high as $1 billion.

An Oregon woman won $1 million on a scratch-and-win lottery ticket. Too bad she bought the ticket with a stolen credit card. A Jackson County judge recently ruled Christina Goodenow’s winnings were the proceeds of illegal activity and must be forfeited under Oregon law.

The Seattle Times reported Goodenow had asked lottery officials to keep her win quiet, claiming she was a victim of domestic abuse. Goodenow bought the ticket with a credit card belonging to her boyfriend’s dead mother in 2005. Police learned of her crime two weeks later as she continued to use the stolen credit card. Oregon had already paid Goodenow $33,500 which she has mostly spent.

Although Goodenow pled no contest to forgery, cheating, and aggravated theft, she maintains she bought the winning ticket with cash from her own pocket.

Approximately 99,000 of the Misused Records Contained Credit Card Information

It seems  you can't go a day anymore without hearing about some sort of data security breach. With that said, Fidelity recently announced a data security breach that could adequately be described as "the granddaddy of them all" (as ABC Sports Commentator Keith Jackson used to so beautifully portray The Rose Bowl). In a July 3rd press release, Fidelity announced that a senior database administrator for Certegy (a division of Fidelity National Information Services, Inc.) stole and sold approximately 2.3 million consumer records including personal information like names, addresses, telephone numbers and even bank accounts in most of the cases. The consumer records were apparently sold to a data broker, who then turned around and sold some of the records to direct marketing organizations. Certegy's President Renz Nichols said that there is no reason to think that the theft resulted in any fraudulent activity or damage to the consumer, but have fun trying to tell that to those consumers who must now be even more conscientious of identity theft.

The press release added that Certegy would personally notify all affected consumers; a process that is sure to take some time with more than 2 million people affected. The company is also taking immediate action to create fraud watch procedures for financial institutions, leaving many to wonder why such procedures weren't taken before this crisis!

Although clearly only part of the story, USA Today reports on a modern day money laundering scheme following some of the data stolen from TJX, the parent company of TJ Maxx and other discount clothing stores. The newspaper’s story follows Irving Escobar crisscrossing Florida using counterfeit credit cards to buy stacks of $400 Wal-Mart gift cards, then using them to purchase televisions, computers, and jewelry from Wal-Mart and Sam’s Clubs stores.

Like many corporations that maintain customer’s records, TJX was the victim of identity theft, losing credit card data for over 45 million customers since 2005. Customer data was then used to counterfeit credit cards using a false name on the front, while the data strip on the back contained all the data needed to charge the cards.

Escobar hired several “employees” to use the bogus cards to buy gift cards and use the cards at different stores around Florida. On one day, three members of the group went to two Wal-Marts in Gainesville. They went to more than 30 checkout counters and purchased $42,000 in gift cards. A week later, Bank of America informed Marsha Carney that her Visa card number was used to buy the gift cards in 60 different transactions.

According to USA Today, for the most part, consumers have not been liable for the bogus TJX charges.

A new scam has been developed to steal identities from military families. According to InformationWeek, a thief will call a soldier’s family claiming to be from the Red Cross. The thief will claim the soldier has been injured and has been evacuated to Germany and the medical unit cannot start treatment until the soldier’s paperwork is complete. To complete the paperwork, the supposed Red Cross representative needs to verify the soldier’s Social Security number and date of birth.

The Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Crystal has issued a warning that its representatives never contact military families directly. The Red Cross urged family members to not give out any personal information to anyone they don’t know.

If you believe you’ve been a victim of identity theft, you should contact a lawyer.

To help prevent identity theft, Maricopa County, Arizona has hired a company to pore through 90 million images of divorce decrees, tax liens, child-support judgments, deeds of trust, foreclosure filings, and dozens of other types of public documents and black out Social Security numbers.

Arizona leads the nation in identity theft and the Phoenix metro area (Maricopa County) leads Arizona.

Maricopa County officials are attempting to remove documents from the internet and removing Social Security number from images remaining on the net.

A personal security and identity theft expert recently demonstrated how file-sharing programs can make your hard drive viewable to online thieves. While Internet Explorer offers some protection against identity thieves, peer-to-peer networks do not necessarily protect your data.

Peer-to-peer networks do not work through Internet Explorer. They are stand-alone programs, requiring their own security. Sensitive data may be protected by running security programs, such as those available from Zone-Labs or Norton.

Two Romanian men were indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for running an identity theft scam using ATM machines. Vasile Ciocan and Romulus Pasca are charged with conspiracy, fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

The two suspects allegedly attached card readers to ATM machines. They used to information gathered by their illicit devices to make phony ATM cards. The cards were then used to withdraw money from ATM machines. The suspects were caught after police were tipped to suspicious activity around ATMs in Pittsburgh.

Police warned people to keep track of their credit card and bank accounts.

A drug raid in Lexington County, South Carolina turned up a major identity theft ring. While seizing 11 pounds of cocaine, authorities discovered a counterfeiting operation. The identity theft ring was making counterfeit social security cards based on stolen social security numbers.

While authorities did not indicate what the ring did with the cards, most likely, they were used as false identification for illegal immigrants seeking work in the United States.

Sid Kirchheimer, who writes the Scam-Alert column for the AARP Bulletin, offered tips on the Today Show on how to scam proof your death. Kirchheimer said identity thieves look through obituaries foe names and addresses of people who have recently passed on, then they buy their Social Security numbers on the internet.

Jay Foley of the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, California said about 400,000 checking accounts were opened in the names of deceased people in 2004.

Five people, including four JetBlue employees, were charged in using left-behind credit cards to run up hundreds of dollars in fraudulent charges. The Queens District Attorney said three of the JetBlue employees worked at the company’s counter at Kennedy Airport in New York. Another is a JetBlue flight attendant.

Investigators became suspicious when a traveler discovered $500 in unauthorized charges on a credit card he had left at the JetBlue counter.

WIBW in Kansas, warned its viewers about a new phishing scam by identity thieves. Phishing is a common term for scammers who contact someone by phone or email and ask them for their identity information.

In this new scam, a phisher will call a potential victim and claim he is from a collection agency attempting to collect on an unpaid account. When the victim denies ever having the account, the scammer’s trying to collect on, he tells the victim to file a police report and fax it to him. The faxed police report gives the scammer all of the information he needs to steal your identity.

Here’s my question … Shouldn’t it be easy to stop this particular scam when police reports are being filed?

A San Antonio, Texas doctor claims he is the victim of identity theft or a computer virus, rather than a possessor of child pornography. Dr. David Christopher Winkler has been accused of possessing over 200 images and eight hours of videos of boys and girls in sexual acts. He claims he “may have been a victim of identity theft and computer hacking, or a computer virus.” Winkler’s attorney said this could happen to anyone owns a computer. 

A search of Winkler’s home computer found no child porn, but a search of his office computer found the illegal material. The Cyber Crimes Unit of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office (ICE) obtained search warrants based on records showing Winkler had purchased access to child porn sites. Winkler’s attorney said the Doctor’s office building had broken into a number of times.

Considering that any rational person would be more likely to have such illegal material on his home computer, rather than at the office, Winkler may be the victim of a sick, identity theft practical joke.

For years, the U.S. Agriculture Department publicly listed Social Security numbers for tens of thousands of people who received financial aid from its agencies. Such publicly exposed data is ripe for identity theft. Officials at USAD and the Census Bureau, where the data was stored, said they did not realize the database contained Social Security numbers. The problem was reported, only last week, by an Illinois farmer who stumbled across the data on the internet.

Marsha Bergmeier, president of Mohr Family Farms in Fairmount, Illinois, said she “was bored and typed the name of my farm into Google to see what was out there.” The second link in the Google results was a site that she had not heard of, FedSpending.org, which was a searchable list of federal government spending. Bergmeier said she was able to identity almost 30,000 records in the database that contained Social Security numbers. A USAD official said they immediately took the information “down.”

Is there anyone out there, whose personal information is still personal?

13 New York waiters were arrested for stealing customer’s credit information. Authorities say that waiters at about forty restaurants, in New York and elsewhere, collected customers’ credit card information and passed it on to people who used the information to make more than $3 million worth of illegal purchases.

This was apparently an organised effort. Some members of the group stole customers’ information, some made counterfeit cards, others shopped for merchandise, and finally someone bought the goods for cash.

Police say that when the ringleader was arrested for identity theft, police found 296 fake credit cards, $200,000 in cash, and a stack of Rolex watches in his home.

Leaders of the conspiracy recruited waiters and gave them handheld “skimmers” that read and collected information from a credit card’s magnetic strip. The waiters were paid only about $35 to $50 per night for stealing the data.

The Oregon State Senate unanimously approved a bill creating a crime of aggravated identity theft. Under the new law, someone convicted of committing multiple identity theft crimes, racking up more than $10,000 of value in stolen items, or having been convicted previously of identity theft would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

The new law would apply to anyone who commits 10 or more identity thefts within a six month period, possesses personal identifications of 10 or more people without authorization, or causes losses of $10,000 or more in six months.

Senator Roger Beyer said “We need to keep doing minor things like this to try to stay ahead of the certified-smart bad guys who are stealing people’s identities.”

Charges were filed in St. George Utah against Ruben Rodriguez-Cera for identity theft. He had been using Eliborio Beltran’s identity for several years. Beltran’s wallet had been stolen in Texas, about eight years ago. He has had problems with his identity ever since.

Utah police used fingerprints and Rodriguez-Cera’s signature to determine that he was not Beltran, but an illegal, undocumented worker. Rodriguez-Cera has confessed. He will be deported.

Authorities have amended the criminal history to clear Beltran's name from criminal charges that relate to Rodriguez-Cera, but his credit history will be more difficult for him to straighten out.

Following the massive identity theft from TJX, the parent company of TJ Maxx and other retailers, the State of Massachusetts is considering laws that target such cases. Information from almost 50 million credit cards was stolen form TJX between 2001 and 2006. TJX, only recently discovered the thefts, and claims most of the cards are expired.

Massachusetts now proposes a bankrupt idea to fight identity theft of this kind. The new law would require companies to notify customers in a more timely manner and allow customers to place a security freeze on their credit reports. This suggested law, again, places all of the responsibility for protecting oneself from identity theft on the consumer. Where’s the crackdown on these multi-million dollar corporations for their shoddy security?

A new Zogby Interactive poll shows that the vast majority of Americans worry that their identity might be stolen and used to make unauthorized purchases.  The Poll found that 91 percent of people in the United States are worried about identity theft.

In addition, 91 percent said they are concerned that retailers, credit card companies, banks and other firms could sell their personal information for marketing purposes and 83 percent said they are concerned that information provided to retailers could end up in the hands of others, either through theft, or sale.

29 percent of Americans, however, said they rarely read privacy polices from retailers, credit card companies, and banks about how they will use a customer's personal information. 8 percent said they never read the privacy policies.