On-Site Document Shredding: In the News

Identity Theft knows no bounds. All businesses, big and small, are vulnerable to this complex and rising crime. Any business or organization that gathers any personal information or account numbers are at risk. Although businesses have several choices to dispose of confidential information, on-site shredding is, and always will be, the most prudent and convenient method available. Following are some examples of information handling gone wrong.

Identity Theft In The News

Felon held in ID Theft, credit fraud

Source: Online. http://www.sptimes.com. 10 July 2004

CLEARWATER - In 2001, Jaqueeba Johnson stole credit and credit card numbers by printing an extra receipt as customers paid for orders at the Tricon Restaurant. She used the credit card numbers over the phone to make arrangements for her wedding, which was held on a boat and included $4,000 in limo services, a $500 dress and nearly $700 in flowers. In all, Johnson tried to charge a total of $5,675 over the phone with stolen credit card information. Johnson, her new husband and her two children from a previous relationship, then went on a honeymoon to Hawaii for seven days.

Johnson, who has a number of other theft and fraud charges in her criminal history, pleaded no contest to the charges a year after her arrest. She was sentenced to two years in prison. Following her release in August, Johnson got a man's bank account information and tried to empty his account, police say. After getting the account numbers, Johnson opened a bank account in her 4-yar-old son's name, then wrote the bank a letter asking the $9,400 of the victim's money be transferred to her son's account. A bank employee realized it was a scam and didn't allow the transfer.

Johnson soon stole a neighbor's child support check and signed it over to herself, then used a stolen credit card to charge more then $700 at Target, Exxon and other businesses, according to the police. Arrest reports indicate Johnson got the victim's personal information by stealing from mail boxes and pilfering a wallet from someone at her child's day care center. She is also charged with violating the probation for her previous charges.

Identity Theft nightmare

Source: Online. http://www.techtv.com/cybercrime. 7 May 2002

It’s been four years now, but Mari Frank is still feeling the effects. Her identity was stolen in 1996. Due to the extensive financial damage and fraud alerts on her credit, Frank must carry the first page of the police report in her wallet.

“When someone gets their identity stolen, it is a total nightmare. It changed my life entirely. For a while I was really paranoid…. My identity was stolen when a woman I didn’t even know went online and ordered my credit report,” Frank said. “And she did this by working in a law office pretending to be a private investigator.

“Really, she was a paralegal,” Frank continued. “She had access to the Internet, she had access to the online services [and to] the data dealers, and she was able to order my credit report. A couple of clicks was all it took to assume the identity of Mari Frank.

“Once she had my credit report, she had everything in front of her,” Frank recounted. “She knew my date of birth. She knew all the information about me because on the header information on your credit report is your birthday, your Social Security number, your former name, your address, your unlisted phone number. It also has all of your credit cards.”

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Metro area mail theft increasing

Source: NAID News, July 2000; By: Jim Hart (excerpt from West Linn Tidings, November 1999)

Criminals gain much valuable personal information about a person by taking old bills out of the paper-recycling bin. To avoid this scenario, shred all paper with personal information.

Tearing isn’t enough, because police have found some papers taped together and used to gain another person’s funds. Information can be found in Dumpsters of businesses, a practice the police call “Dumpster Diving.” They are trying to get local businesses to shred all paper with customer’s personal information.

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Dumpster diving industry

Source: The Washington Times; Written by: John Danker, former detective, currently a corporate security adviser with a Washington company

One day last summer, a Metropolitan Police strike force burst through a door in a downtown office building searching for money-launderers. What they found instead, in a vacant conference room, astounded them.

Around a large table were comfortable chairs. Before each chair were documents – some wrinkled and coffee-stained, others looking fresh-off-the-printer. One chair faced legal documents, another a stack of accounting reports. A third confronted piles of engineering documents, blueprints, and memos. A fourth stood before insurance and personnel documents, salary tables. Before the fifth chair were a series of reports on real estate transactions, all marked “Strictly confidential,” and at the next chair were budget projections and cash-flow forecasts.

Around the perimeter of this room, in place of chairs for observers, were garbage bags filled with documents not yet sorted. This was an enterprise founded on waste paper – paper from various large metropolitan offices and businesses. The paper they discarded was being collected from waste bins and carried here. Then it was sorted by subject and set before experts on such topics, who decided its significance and value. And then, no doubt, it was sold to firms and people who should not have it.

What the raiders had discovered was the raw material of industrial espionage. One of the police officers in the room, as he realized what was being done here, captured the process in a phrase: “Dumpster Divers!”

A few months later, on the other side of the continent, a law enforcement agency in California received information that led to the arrest of nine people ho were harvesting, from dumpsters behind service stations, journal tapes that had recorded cash and credit transactions. These tapes contained credit card account numbers that the Dumpster Divers then transferred to magnetic strips on counterfeit credit cards.

With these, large amounts of gasoline were purchased at customer-activated terminals, some by dealers who were stealing gasoline from their competitors. The thieves drove vans with specially-built containers from which large volumes of stolen gasoline could be pumped into their own underground service-station tanks.

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Identity Theft case files

Source: Online http://www.ipc.on.ca. 08 February 00

Identity Theft is a devastating crime, as it invades the privacy of its victims. In some cases, businesses and organizations are being held accountable for their lack of information privacy and control. To gain an understanding of the untold stress and aggravation Identity Theft victims must endure, read the following true stories:

• A young secretary spent years trying to clear her name after a tax evader got hold of her SIN card, which the secretary had never received. The imposter used the secretary’s name and SIN to move from job to job and college unemployment insurance, health benefits, and maternity benefits — all without paying any taxes.

The secretary was continually harassed by the government to settle “her” unpaid income taxes. Revenue Canada even garnished her bank account and earnings. Revenue Canada even garnished her bank account and earnings. The victim had to travel to each of the thief’s six former employers, pleading for written statements to prove to tax officials that she herself had never worked there.

• After years of turmoil, a Texas couple won a $1.45 million lawsuit against their identity thief for invasion of privacy, defamation, and a host of other charges. However, given the offender’s paltry assets, this may have been a shallow victory. The offender was a former loans officer who had obtained the couple’s personal information by using the bank’s credit terminal to access their credit report.

Using their SSN's, address, and financial account information, the thief opened 21 finance, gas, and other credit accounts totaling approximately $50,000. In a separate action, the couple also sued 13 credit bureaus, collection agencies, banks, stores, and other creditors involved in the case, for violations of privacy, defamation, and other charges.

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