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Biggest Identity Thief Ever Gets Put Away

Posted by timothy on from the no-that-would-be-the-government dept.

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."

1 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by grahamsz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why does a help desk operator have access to my credit report?

    Surely you can design a system where very few humans ever have contact with all of a persons information.

    I've dealt with on UK bank where when you wanted to perform certain transactions using telephone banking you were passed to a second tier operator and instructed not to give them your name.

    Presumably the system was set up such that no one person had enough confidential information on a single customer.

    The US really needs far stricter controls on SSNs - it's insane how often i need my ssn for day to day transactions.