Slashdot Mirror
Portrait of an Identity Thief
Ant writes to tell us that the New York Times has a closer look and an interview with an identity theft addict. From the article: "As far back as 2002, Mr. Sharma began picking the locks on consumer credit lines using a computer, the Internet and a deep understanding of online commerce, Internet security and simple human nature, obtained through years of trading insights with like-minded thieves in online forums. And he deployed the now-common rods and reels of data theft -- e-mail solicitations and phony Web sites -- that fleece the unwitting."
The reason most people don't do it is because they're honest and want to help out the human race instead of being a drain on society.
God spoke to me.
That is what worries Mr. Sharma's wife, Damaris, 21, who has no time for the Internet as she raises the couple's 1-year-old daughter, Bellamarie.
"I hate computers," she said. "I think they're the devil."
Sorry. I just thought that was funny, and had to post it.
Gamertag: WyleType
n/t
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Can anyone say... script kiddie?
The guy is clearly dumb as a rock. Who the hell takes a stolen credit card, buys stuff with it, and then has the stuff delivered to his doorstep???!!? I don't know jack about stealing identities, but this guy's MO is just plain stoopid.
Trust the mainstream media to make him sound like some kind of twisted, tortured genius.
What's this "identity theft addict" balonium? Do you call bank robbers "bank robbing addicts"? All bad behavior is not addiction. The guy is a lowlife crook who found an easy way to make money and kept coming back to it, plain and simple.
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
Did anyone else find this guys total lack of remorse in his actions a little...well...wrong!
Not to mention this quote
which implies that if it wasn't hard to get back in to he might consider it.
What an ass!
Anonymity of the internet is responsible for the views expressed in my post.
Are we offshoring identity theft to India too?
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Fraud |= theft. In plain English, fraud does not equal theft.
It's the same as the copyright argument. You cannot steal someone's identity. You can use it frauduantly. You can pose as someone you are not. You can give false witness. But identity fraud ISN'T!
Libertas in infinitum
...is with the absence of any sense of responsibility for the consequences.
"It's an addiction, no doubt about that," said Mr. Sharma
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
On the whole, we seem to be slowly moving from a "govern thyself" to a "If no-ones watching, why not?" frame of mind.
I wonder if this is almost being encouraged by the powers that be as it fosters a feeling that it's ok for them to be watching because I no longer expect the others around me to be governing their own behavior...
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
True, but check TFA. The email scam referred to was only one of his early efforts. His later (and more lucrative) scams involved buying numbers and doing direct financial transfers from those accounts. One of my accounts had something similar happen to it. It was only due to the fact that the individual responsible had used two smaller charges the previous day, and it happend to be the day that I was paying bills and saw the two fradulent charges during an online reconciliation that I discovered it and was able to cancel the transfer. I'm starting to think that the entire credit card system is broken. It is just far too easy to obtain stolen numbers, and far to easy to negotiate into goods or (as above) cash. That cards can still be used for wire transfers absolutely boggles my mind. Unfortunately, I don't know of any better system. Right now I use "disposable" numbers as often as I can when doing ecommerce. They minimize (but do not elminate) the risk, but they can't be used for recurring charges, and relatively few card issuers. I'm thinking that the penalities here are too light. This guy was involved in grand larceny, easily more than $200k. Why only a couple of years? Small time drug dealers (an offense with far less of a victim) get many times that penality. When the takings are so lucrative, the chances of being caught low, and the penalities light, its no wonder this is such a fast growing crime. Why perform an armed bank robccbery (average take, about $4,000 per the FBI) and get 20 years if you get caught when credit card fraud ($10k per theft) only will get you 2? And did you notice that some of his biggest takes were when he was under indictment and out on bail? WTF?
Even for wire-transfers with a credit card. Simply have the bank call the phone numbers they have on record for you and have you press a button sequence to authorize the purchase or wire-transfer.
... and re-route the phone system.
... but the more steps that it takes, the more likely it is that the thief will fail to complete it. And the easier it will be to track him. Although it can't get much easier than tracking this punk. He gave them his address to deliver his stolen purchases to.
The banks already have the systems to do automated calling.
The banks already have your phone numbers. And your mailing address.
Now the thief has to steal your credit card numbers
Or steal the numbers and fake your ID and go to a bank branch and change the phone numbers.
All of that is possible for a thief to do
But doing that would move the risk and costs to the banks. They prefer it the way it currently is because the banks aren't losing money on these fraud cases.
There probably are bank robbers who are addicted to what they do. The concept of "addiction" is just a model for understanding destructive behavior. It's not an attempt to excuse it. In fact, the opposite is true: people who are fighting addiction, and the people who help them (often addicts themselves) will tell you that the worst thing you can do for an addict is overlook his or her misdeeds.
Stories like this really irk me, and show how the industry wants to make the notion of identity theft much scarier than it really is. This is an example of an "identity thief?" This moron used stolen credit cards and shipped the crap to his parents' house where he lived. He's an idiot. Other people with common sense wouldn't do stupid shit like what he was doing. There's no skill involved in what he did. Any waiter or someone who handles credit cards on a daily basis could do the same thing, but they don't because they're not idiots like this guy.
In the end, anybody he ripped off probably didn't have to pay, so it was the merchants that got screwed if anybody, and this is becoming harder and harder to pull off.
If there's one thing this article does point out, it's that if the feds really want to stop identity theft damages, they'd shut down Western Union. That money transfer service pretty much solely exists now to play a party to scams of this nature.
As I posted in another related story, if you ever suspect (or know) you've been the victim of Identity Theft, here's what to do:
Contact the credit agency of your choice to put a fraud watch on your file. The agency you contact will notify the other two for you.
Equifax: 1-800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
Experian: 1-888-EXPERIAN (397-3742); www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790
Its also a good idea to call 1-888-5OPTOUT to prevent banks, insurance companies, and those pesky fakers (remember the ChoicePoint fiasco) from getting ahold of your credit report. All 3 agencies use that same number for the opt out process. That should significantly cut down on those pre-approved credit card offers you get in the mail that can be stolen and used in your name as well.
And for the Active Duty members in the crowd that happen to be TDY, you should consider getting an Active Duty military alert placed in your name in addition to a fraud alert. You can never be too safe when it comes to preventing ID theft. However, no matter what you do there's still no guarantee you won't fall victim to the random oddity that can occur (such as a bartender swiping your card # and going nuts on Amazon).
For more info on how to minimize the risks of ID theft, or how to recover from it, check out the FTC's website at www.ftc.gov/idtheft
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
TFA in case anyone else is having trouble with access:
July 4, 2006
Stolen Lives
Identity Thief Finds Easy Money Hard to Resist
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
By the time of Shiva Brent Sharma's third arrest for identity theft, at the age of 20, he had taken in well over $150,000 in cash and merchandise in his brief career. After a certain point, investigators stopped counting.
The biggest money was coming in at the end, postal inspectors said, after Mr. Sharma had figured out how to buy access to stolen credit card accounts online, change the cardholder information and reliably wire money to himself -- sometimes using false identities for which he had created pristine driver's licenses.
But Mr. Sharma, now 22, says he never really kept track of his earnings.
"I don't know how much I made altogether, but the most I ever made in a quick period was like $20,000 in a day and a half or something," he said, sitting in the empty meeting hall at the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., where he is serving a two- to four-year term. "Working like three hours today, three hours tomorrow -- $20,000."
And once he knew what he was doing, it was all too easy.
"It's an addiction, no doubt about that," said Mr. Sharma, who inflected his words with the sort of street cadence adopted by smart kids trying to be cool. "I get scared that when I get out, I might have a problem and relapse because it would be so easy to take $300 and turn it into several thousand."
That ease accounts for the sizable ranks of identity-fraud victims, whose acquaintance with the crime often begins with unexplained credit card charges, a drained bank account or worse. The victims' tales have become alarmingly familiar, but usually lack a protagonist -- the perpetrator. Mr. Sharma's account of his own exploits provides the missing piece: an insight into both the tools and the motivation of a persistent thief.
Identity theft can, of course, have its origins in a pilfered wallet or an emptied mailbox. But for computer-savvy thieves like Mr. Sharma, the Internet has forged new conduits for the crime, both as a means of stealing identity and account information and as the place to use it.
The Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have invested millions of dollars in monitoring Internet sites where thousands of users from around the world congregate to swap tips about identity theft and to buy and sell personal data. Mr. Sharma frequented such sites from their earliest days, and the techniques he learned there have become textbook-variety scams.
"Shiva Sharma was probably one of the first, and he was certainly one of the first to get caught," said Diane M. Peress, a former Queens County prosecutor who handled all three of Mr. Sharma's cases and who is now the chief of economic crimes with the Nassau County district attorney's office. "But the kinds of methods that he used are being used all the time."
As far back as 2002, Mr. Sharma began picking the locks on consumer credit lines using a computer, the Internet and a deep understanding of online commerce, Internet security and simple human nature, obtained through years of trading insights with like-minded thieves in online forums. And he deployed the now-common rods and reels of data theft -- e-mail solicitations and phony Web sites -- that fleece the unwitting.
Much of this unfolded from the basement of a middle-class family home in Richmond Hill, Queens, at the hands of a high school student with a knack for problem solving and an inability, even after multiple arrests, to resist the challenge of making a scheme pay off.
That is what worries Mr. Sharma's wife, Damaris, 21, who has no time for the Internet as she raises the couple's 1-year-old daughter, Bellamarie.
"I hate computers," she said. "I think they're the devil."
A Thief's Tool Kit
Mr. Sharma is soft-spoken, but he does not shrink from the spotlight. He gained fleeting attention after his first arrest, as the first person
United Way, The Smith Family, Medecin Sans Frontieres, Oxfam, Starlight foundation, etc etc. If you weren't just trolling, have a look here http://www.secularhumanism.org/ for an insight into compassion in secular society.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Many secular (and protestant) charities support Catholic charities.
It doesn't mean there's a hidden agenda. It merely reflects the fact that catholic charities and churches can be found in many places where it would be too expensive, dangerous, or impractical to set up another office.
If the purpose is the same, and someone else already has the infrastructure in place, it doesn't make much sense to spend money building a duplicate of that infrastructure.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
That's just it. Atheists don't make a connection between gods and charity, so yes, these are atheist charities in the sense that they are the ones atheists give to. Although I despise United Way as nothing more than another church by the way companies and football players push it - their overhead is ridiculous. Oxfam gets my money.
The mistake you're making is that you think you have to advertise your charitible giving. That's almost entirely a religious evangelistic behavior, stuffing propoganda in the thanksgiving dinner boxes when giving them out.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?