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Biggest Identity Thief Ever Gets Put Away
Anonymous Brave Guy writes "Apparently computer helpdesk employee Philip Cummings had more than just a day job: he's just gone down for 14 years in the biggest identity theft case ever. Lots of fascinating nuggets of information in that story: apparently fake ID goes for as little as $60, and the total stolen over just a couple of years was somewhere in the $50m-100m range."
People like this should be put away for a long time for ruining one's credit rating and making their lives a living hell. Restitution will be good too, but how much can you make in the can? not much.
Good riddance.
Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
Something tells me the 30,000 people he scammed aren't going to see a dime. Since Phil is not allowed to compensate with stolen funds, and he is unlikely to be returning to his lucrative helpdesk job anytime soon, I doubt he'll be able to fork over even $1 per victim.
The actual "victim" in these cases is almost always the creditor, not the person whose identity was stolen. It costs the person a bunch of time and energy to correct the problems, but the stolen money comes from the creditors, and they have a budget for fraud.
The UK has Data Protection laws now which mean that if employees have access to personal information they have to have a damn good reason, and if they don't the company is liable.
I'd like to see the sentence doubled, if not tripled.
For those of you that haven't experience it, you have no idea what a living hell identity theft can make your life.
Come to think of it....maybe a public execution would be in order.
SSN's aren't unique, they get reused
Social Security numbers were originally just a Tax ID, people wouldn't get them until age 16 or so (this was changed, according to wikipedia, in the 1980s when SSN's were required to list "dependants). It's sad, it was (as i'm told, I did not experience this) stated that it would "never be used as a national id" or something to that effect, and it has.
At least it's not to the same extent (i think) that it is in the UK. But that's not to say it won't be.
For context, click Parent.
It is a valid point, but the people themselves will get their money back (possibly less some fees depending on their bank). I'll use the example of my parents.
A few years back, my mom lost her credit card, and the wrong person found it. They rang it up to the limit buying all sorts of stuff. They bought a couch, a few DVD's, paid their bills, and even set their car loan to automatically bill the card. My mom rarely uses it for anything, so the sudden spending spree must have set off alarm bells, and they called her within a couple days, even before she'd realized she lost it.
It took my parents almost three months to get the mess all settled. The guy who found the credit card was on the verge of bankruptcy. It went to court, and his creditors testified that he was days away from getting his car reposessed, and that the couch he bought was probably to replace a living room set that he'd bought on credit and then failed to pay for.
There was no way he could afford to pay back what he'd stolen, but my parents got all their money back (Even the $50 limit they had to pay initially) through the credit card company, who have systems in place to protect themselves against things like this.
Up here in Canada only goverment agencies, employers and banks are allowed to require SIN (equivilent to SSN). Anyone else you just tell them no you won't give them your SIN, and they have to provide whatever service or product anyways.