Identity Fraud

Fair Isaac Corp. has launched a new online consumer service, ID Fraud Intercept, designed to spot potential identify theft early by monitoring hundreds of databases for changes to a consumer's personal address or phone number, often the earliest indication of identity theft. Subscribers to the $89.95-a-year service at www.myFICO.com receive weekly e-mail alerts if changes to their personal information are detected. Each e-mail provides links to the suspicious information.

A federal judge sentenced the longtime girlfriend of reputed Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger to eight years in prison Tuesday and fined her $150,000 for helping “someone accused of the most serious crimes imaginable.” Catherine Greig, 61, showed no emotion in the courtroom as U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock told her she had plenty of time during her 16 years in hiding to understand the seriousness of her actions, according to...

In "It's Known as Identity Fraud, but by Any Name It's an Ugly Crime" (Aug. 25), the Federal Trade Commission sets forth tips for preventing identity fraud, among them not giving out your Social Security number. But California's Franchise Tax Board includes the recipient's Social Security number on the mailing label when it sends out tax forms. When I wrote requesting that my Social Security number be removed from the label, I was informed that they could not do so, but that I could write requesting that no tax forms be sent to our home.

Los Angeles County health worker Leonardo Rincon lifts the birth certificate up to the light and expertly scrutinizes it. Do faint watermarks show up? Yes. He rubs his thumb over the official seal to see if it is raised. It is. He checks the number of digits in the document number. Perfect. Ruth Torres, he decides, has brought in valid U.S. birth certificates for her six children, a valid U.S. passport for her husband and a valid green card for herself, a legal immigrant from Mexico.

A Santa Paula man has pleaded guilty to numerous counts of identity fraud, forgery, falsifying a driver's license and possessing a blank counterfeit check in connection with an identity theft ring involving 22 victims. Timothy Wayne Murphy, 31, was arrested in Moorpark in July after being stopped for driving an unregistered car. When a Ventura County sheriff's deputy questioned him, Murphy gave the officer a false name, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Howard Wise.

Travelers Property Casualty Corp., the No. 3 U.S. property and casualty insurer, said Tuesday that it has launched insurance coverage for victims of identity fraud--the first coverage of its kind. Identity fraud occurs when a criminal takes someone's personal identification information, then represents himself or herself as the victim in order to fraudulently obtain money and property.

Lesley Wenger brushed off the first inkling of credit fraud as a bizarre marketing stunt. A credit manager from an electronics store called to verify her credit application. But Wenger had never been in the store and had never applied for credit. When the store representative continued to press, asking for her Social Security number and other identifying information, she just thought it was an aggressive marketing tactic to get her to apply for a card she didn't want. "I told him to forget it.

Consumers reported more than 670,000 cases of fraud and identity theft in 2006 that cost them $1.2 billion, the Federal Trade Commission said. For the seventh straight year, ID theft was the most common complaint, accounting for 36%, or 246,035, of the cases.

When Lorraine Machado thought she was the only one, she was frightened. When she realized she was just one victim in a cluster of schoolteachers whose identities had been stolen, she became mad. Now the soft-spoken teacher at Webster Middle School in West Los Angeles has mobilized the dozen colleagues who also have been victimized. They are pushing law enforcement to consolidate its cases and pursue the perpetrators.

A new law signed Friday by President Clinton promises to crack down on the growing crime of identity fraud. The law helps bring closure to Laguna Niguel attorney Mari Frank's two-year ordeal. Designed to stem one of the biggest and fastest-growing financial frauds in America, the law could benefit hundreds of thousands of people who, like Frank, suddenly wake up to learn that somebody else has been living their life.

Was it fate that brought the thief directly to her that day? Hubris? Malice, perhaps? It was impossible to know. Yet there was Michelle McCambridge, a 23-year-old JCPenney salesclerk, looking at the woman who not long before had stolen thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, video game consoles and other merchandise by claiming to be Michelle McCambridge. As their eyes locked, McCambridge felt herself go numb, a mix of adrenaline and anger. The woman in front of her stood impassively.

Hackers got access to 130 million credit and debit card accounts, federal prosecutors allege. But the account that matters most is yours, right? Here's a consumer guide to the info breach. Does the law require a company to inform me if my card was possibly accessed? Normally, yes. California's privacy law forces businesses to notify state residents whose information might have been breached. But it has limits: If the number of people to contact exceeds 500,000, or if notification costs exceed $250,000, companies are not required to directly contact all potential victims.

Prosecutors charged 54 employees of a Valencia music reproduction business with identity theft Monday in what the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said appeared to be a massive tax evasion scheme that company managers should have detected. A search warrant executed last week led to the arrests of 55 of L&M Optical Disc West's 200 or so employees and the charges of using false documents to obtain employment against all but one of those arrested.

Here's an economic indicator we could all live without: Incidents of identity theft and credit card fraud are apparently on the rise as bad economic times bring out the worst in some people. And you can add me to the list of folk who've been victimized. All my cash and credit cards and my driver's license were stolen last week. Within an hour of the theft, bogus purchases were being made or attempted at Best Buy, Target and Toys R Us locations throughout the area.

More than 1,000 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center had their personal information taken by a former employee in the hospital's billing department, according to hospital officials who said prosecutors allege that the man used the identities to steal from insurance companies. The hospital's chief financial officer warned affected patients in a letter sent last week that their information had been found during a search of the former employee's home.

Federal authorities this week announced a series of arrests and convictions in connection with a global identity theft ring that stole millions of dollars by hijacking home-equity lines of credit issued to thousands of consumers. On Monday, state and federal law enforcement officials arrested four men who were part of a group that allegedly combined high-tech equipment with old-fashioned con artistry to drain home-equity lines.

Federal prosecutors in Phoenix are asking a judge to issue an unusual order to force-feed a hunger-striking Middle Eastern pilot arrested on charges stemming from the investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. Malek Mohamed Seif, also known as Malek Mohamed Abdulah, is protesting what he contends is his improper detention as part of the global anti-terrorism dragnet. Taking only liquids, Seif has lost 30 pounds since his October arrest and is rapidly deteriorating, officials said.

With identity theft now regarded as the fastest-growing consumer fraud in the nation, the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles is spearheading an outreach program to help people avoid becoming victims. The program, launched in February, is built around a 23-minute video -- also available on DVD -- that describes the myriad ways in which thieves can obtain your personal financial information, how to protect yourself from being victimized and what to do if you are. A recent survey by Gartner Inc.

Everyone is afraid of identity theft. It seems as if every couple of days there are new reports of Social Security numbers and other sensitive information stolen, lost or leaked. Just last week Countrywide Financial, which is now owned by Bank of America, said it would provide two years of free credit monitoring for customers whose confidential data were allegedly stolen by a former employee. But should you spend money to buy services that promise to protect you from identity theft?

Federal authorities said Tuesday that they had cracked the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history, charging 11 people in the theft of more than 40 million credit and debit card account numbers from computer systems at such major retailers as TJ Maxx and Barnes & Noble.