A 19-year-old Los Angeles man, who allegedly used a legitimate company’s name to trick 2,700 people into providing credit card and personal information over the Internet, was charged with identity theft.
Ryan Daniel Hovey pleaded innocent this afternoon to 14 counts of identity theft, along with 13 counts of access card fraud, two counts of grand theft and one count of attempted grand theft.
Hovey, who was arrested last Friday, was ordered held on $500,000 bail pending his next appearance in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom on Nov. 9. Hovey allegedly collected the personal identifying information and access card numbers of about 2,200 people.
He used their personal and credit card information to make purchases of merchandise ranging from computer equipment to airline tickets, alleged Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey McGrath, head of the High Tech Crimes Unit.
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Federal authorities are investigating a Reno woman arrested on identity theft charges after she was stopped driving a stolen rental truck packed with stolen credit cards and checks, the Nevada Highway Patrol reported.
The U.S. Postal Service, Nevada Division of Investigations and NHP are investigating Michelle Anthony, 19, of Reno, said Trooper Chuck Allen, NHP spokesman. The expanded investigation involves out-of-state stolen credit cards and checks.
Anthony was stopped Oct. 25 by a trooper after she failed to stop at a stop sign at Sixth and West streets, Allen said. She had been driving a U-Haul truck with a spray-painted graffiti on its side. Allen said the truck had been stolen from a Reno service center, where it was supposed to be returned earlier that month.
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Tennessee - The Bradley County Sheriff’s Office reported a case of identity theft over the weekend when a woman discovered her bank account was overdrawn. She contacted her bank and was told the account has four charges pending in Illinois. Those transactions amount to several hundred dollars.
Another woman received notice from a collection agency of an unpaid bill for a computer that was purchased two years ago. She filed a police report denying any knowledge of the purchase.
Last week a woman learned of charges in her name amounting to several thousand dollars that were made without her knowledge.
The sheriff’s office investigated several assaults over the weekend. In one investigation both parties involved in the disagreement were arrested for domestic assault. In another, a 17-year-old was named in Juvenile Court papers charged with assault for verbal threats he made.
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A ring stole the identities of dozens of patients from a Chicago hospital and doctors’ offices and then used the confidential information to steal at least $150,000 from the victims’ bank accounts, federal authorities said Thursday.
The 35-count indictment, made public Thursday, alleged that the ring bought the sensitive information from two insiders who at the time worked for the doctors’ groups.
Among those charged were Tiana Hill, 36, who worked as an administrative employee in the billing department for physicians who practiced at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and Bonnie Williams, 59, a receptionist at Lincoln Park Family Physicians Group.
Both women allegedly accessed patient records, obtained bank account and other personal identification information and sold it to ringleaders Geraldine Cooper, 63, and Lamont Martin, 55, the indictment charged.
According to authorities, the ringleaders obtained the information on more than 100 patients from Hill and dozens from Williams.
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Imagine a child with more than a dozen credit cards and thousands of dollars in debt. Shiloh Pucket is only ten years old, and her credit has already been ruined. The person responsible? Her mother.
Cindy Pucket stole her daughter’s identity, she claims, “It was a means of necessity. We needed help.”
Linda Foley at the Identity Theft Resource Center said, “Child identity theft is one of the most vicious crimes I can think of.”
Children are the latest victims of identity theft. More than half a million kids have their identities stolen each year. But it’s not always a relative to blame. The crook can be a complete stranger who gets your child’s social security number and starts applying for credit.
Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert, “Once they have that number, they can go and open up accounts.” Children are a big target because they have unblemished credit and the crime can go unnoticed for years. “And that entire credit report has probably been ruined,” adds Foley.
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A Rochester man admitted Tuesday that he engaged in widespread identity theft, pilfering credit card numbers through fake Web sites and even collaborating with computer hackers in Eastern European countries.
Daniel A. Defelippi, 23, pleaded guilty Tuesday to nine separate counts of federal identity fraud. The former Rochester Institute of Technology student admitted that he practiced “phishing,” a term that refers to the creation of fake Web pages in order to solicit credit card and other information from individuals.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Resnick estimated the cost of the fraud at about $400,000.
While Defelippi’s guilty plea seemed to indicate a sophisticated computer prowess, he was initially arrested in December after a more pedestrian criminal maneuver: He wielded a forged credit card in Syracuse to try to buy a $1,700 laptop computer and an $11.19 pizza.
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A man accused of trying to rape a woman at a tanning salon last week is in more trouble with the law. He was also accused of stealing someone’s identity to get a job.
Alonzo Fishback was arrested Friday after police said he tried to rape an employee of the Hot Spot tanning salon in Smyrna.
But at the time of his arrest, Fishback was working three days a week at Life Action Tennessee, a non-profit agency.
Fishback was working inside group homes that assist people with mental retardation.
Deborah Cole of Life Action Tennessee said she knew Fishback as Lorenzo Wilhoit, a man who worked third shift for her agency cleaning the house and tending to the patients’ needs during the night.
Fishback was on parole after serving time on a 26-year prison term, and following his most recent arrest, many were wondering how a man with a record like Fishback’s got a job caring for the mentally retarded.
State officials said they believe Fishback stole someone’s identity and used it to get the job.
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Never mind the homey advice about shredding your credit card statements and anything that has your Security Security number or other identification that could be stolen. Identity thieves have moved beyond that. (Although it’s still a good idea to deter those “mom and pop” identity operations that crop up now and then.)
Last year, cyber thieves cut out the middle man and mined the personal information on 110,000 consumers from the data banks of Atlanta-based ChoicePoint data selling company, which gathers personal information on us without our permission and then turns around and sells it to everyone from landlords to prospective employers.
After more than 750 people were victimized by identity theft schemes using the data that had been duped out of ChoicePoint by thieves posing as business people in a very amateurish sort of sting, the company fell all over itself to assure its customers that their privacy was its first concern. Yes, no doubt — in that way that a pickpocket’s first concern is that no other thief gets to you first.
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In San Diego, a high-tech, undercover, multijurisdictional task force called the Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Team, or CATCH, targets the nationwide identity theft epidemic.
“This is the fastest-growing crime in the United States today, and it is worldwide,” says Keith Burt, the project director of CATCH and a deputy district attorney in San Diego. “We had one individual who had 10 million profiles in his computer alone.”
Ten million profiles equals 10 million identities. In recent months, at least 5 million more identities have been lost or stolen from some very big names, including:
* The University of California, Berkeley
* Bank of America
* ChoicePoint
* The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles
* DSW Shoe Warehouse
* Boston College
* Ameritrade
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