The Rise Of Corporate Identity Fraud

from the expect-to-see-more-and-more... dept

A few years ago, we wrote about the odd (and somewhat amusing) case of a group of fraudsters in China who didn't just build knockoff NEC products, but created an entirely fake version of NEC in China. Yes, they set themselves up as if they were a legitimate division of NEC, but had nothing to do with the company (other than producing knockoff NEC gear). That was corporate identity fraud taken to an extreme level, but it seems like others are starting to jump into corporate identify fraud in a way quite similar to personal identify fraud. Michael Scott points us to a story about some scammers in West Virginia who took on the identity of various vendors to the state, and were able to scam $2 million out of the state before the scam was exposed. While the article calls this a "rare" occurrence, I'd be willing to bet that it's going to become a lot more common. For scammers looking for a big score, taking on a corporate identity rather than an individual's seems likely to get you into higher dollar amounts much more quickly...

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