criminal mind, a box like that is a bonanza. The thief, along with several accomplices, used the records to get credit cards, buy more than one hundred thousand dollars of goods, and rent three apartments in other people's names. For a time, they lived a joyous life that was way beyond their own means.
Employees at a New Jersey car dealer used the company access to the three leading credit bureaus - Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian - to find strangers with good credit histories, some of them living as far away as Alaska, and then opened up credit card accounts in their names.
A group of Nigerians established themselves in the industrial cleaning business. They had trucks. They had uniforms. They had cleaning supplies. In due course, they had customers. They would come into the company offices at night and clean the place. And they did a beautiful job. But they cleaned the offices of more than grime. They knew how to get at personnel records and would copy Social Security numbers and whatever other useful information they found and steal identities.
And there are endless come-ons that thieves use to sucker people into unwittingly divulging personal information. Not long ago, some fairly provocative flyers suddenly popped up in scores of black communities throughout the South and Midwest. They were stacked on tables in churches, stuck in windshield wipers of parked cars, and tacked to the bulletin boards of senior citizen centers and nursing homes. The headline on them read: "Apply for Newly Approved Slave Reparations! Claim $5,000 in Social Security Reimbursements!" The body of the flyers said that blacks born before 1928 could be eligible for slave reparations under the "Slave Reparation Act." Those born between 1917 and 1926 could apply for Social Security disbursements because of a "fix" made in the Social Security system.
Obviously, a burst of good fortune like this was something that would pique a person's interest, and it seemed plausible. There had been a lot of talk and press about proposed legislation that would pay reparations to black people. But the whole thing was nothing more than a trap set by a ring of identity thieves.
In the Atlanta metropolitan area, a man posing as a jury administrator from the local court system would call people, mostly the wealthy and business owners, and say, "You've forgotten to respond to a summons for jury duty and face a penalty. I can straighten it out right now for you, if you just give me some basic information." Assuming they had overlooked the summons, or it had gotten lost in the mail, the victims would unquestioningly provide their birth dates, mother's maiden name, and Social Security numbers.
Thieves are not at all squeamish about stealing the identity of someone that recently died and resurrecting him for the purpose of spending money. This works because credit bureaus usually don't learn about someone's death for six to twelve months. A common place to locate the personal information necessary here is an obituary. People fail to realize the abundance of material contained in an obituary, particularly that all-important mother's maiden name so universally used for identification means.
One pair of identity thieves stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from some two-dozen victims in seven states. Most of them were selected out of "Who's Who in America," which in its biographies of prominent Americans gives birth date, place of birth, mother's maiden name, and home address, sufficient information for them to request birth certificates and establish credit.
Recently, there was a run of identity thefts involving admirals of the U.S. Navy. One admiral complained that he had been a victim, then another admiral and another - ultimately seven in all. It happens that the thieves were digging out personal information on them from the Congressional Record. It routinely lists all the data a criminal needs to become a military officer.
One woman had her identity stolen by her boss. She was hired by the owner of a magazine publisher, and, in filling out her employment application, divulged the usual supply of personal information. Little did she know that her employer had ruined her own credit in the past and couldn't even get a credit card. Within months of the woman being hired, her boss took out a card in her name and began using it. Who would suspect their boss? But literally anyone can be after your identity.
Years ago, I predicted that once there was a shake-out among all the dot-com startups, criminals would step in and offer to buy