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Scams

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Aug 8th 2003 4:30pm





Having Your Identity Stolen By A Murderer

from the that-can't-be-good dept

The Washington Post is running a very long, but still fascinating account of a guy who had his identity stolen by a murderer. It goes through the usual tales of how difficult it is to be a victim of identity theft, with the mess being left entirely to him to clean up. Then, things get even worse, when the police put out a national warrant for the killer, but used the ID theft victim's name as an alias. The same guy later appeared on America's Most Wanted - and on the show's website, they actually included the ID theft victim's social security number for anyone to see, and refused to respond to multiple requests to take it down. The article also includes lots of info about identity theft, including a section talking about how it's been popular with terrorists. Not much in the article is encouraging.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Felon = Fscked for life

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Aug 9th, 2003 @ 5:40am

    Honestly, the way the Judicial and criminal "justice" system works in the US, even though a criminal does their time, they're often forced to bad situations again.

    Try getting a job with a criminal record that you've "paid your debt to society" on.

    It's almost fscking impossible.

    Personally, I'm surprise criminals don't assume other people's identiy more often.

    Here's a thought for the day: perhaps non-violent felons who have paid their justice system debt to society should be allowed to assume the identity of folks with bad credit ratings or tax cheats... and once the debt has been paid, they get to keep the identity.

    Hey that idea is no more strange that witness protection plan the justice system cooked up more than a decade ago.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    America's Most Disgusting

    identicon
    nil-ram, Aug 9th, 2003 @ 10:31am

    I was especially disgusted that "America's Most Wanted" wouldn't remove the guy's social security number, or even reply to him after repeated e-mails. It took a call from his senator's office to get any response and to have it removed.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Pray this doesn't happen to you

    identicon
    Richard, Aug 10th, 2003 @ 6:37pm

    Recently I have endured someone using my identity on Paypal to make a series of fraudulent purchases. Thankfully, that seems to be the extent of the damage. The really interesting thing to me was, when I called Paypal on it (after discovering the charges on my card) they were less than helpful. And totally unwilling to close the account, even though they acknowledged that the account had been created fraudulently. This was a bit unsettling to me. I am now in the midst of filing a complaint with the FBI. We'll see where this goes.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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