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It’s self-explanatory what identity theft
is.
It’s when someone steals an identity usually
with the objective of using that name to commit
a criminal act.
That might be travelling from country to country
under a name because the thief is wanted by
the police, opening up bank accounts with
someone’s name, renting properties, or perhaps
just opening up social media accounts.
It happens more these days only because so
much information is available online, websites
can be hacked, people’s simple passwords
can be cracked, phones can be stolen, wallets
can be lost or people might fall prey to phishing.
And it happens to a lot of people.
The website Identity Force tells us that in
2017, 16.7 million Americans were at least
once a victim of identity theft.
Today we’ll look at some of the bigger cases,
in this episode of the Infographics Show,
Worst Identity Theft cases.
11.
The journalist
We’ll start with a not-so-serious case only
because you may have seen it in a movie and
it’s quite interesting.
The story is about an American journalist
called Michael Finkel.
Finkel was an up-and-coming writer who was
fired from the New York Times in 2002 for
partly fabricating a story.
As that was going on a serial murderer called
Christian Longo, who had enjoyed Finkel’s
writing, was wandering about Mexico calling
himself Michael Finkel.
He also told people he was a writer for the
New York Times.
The two eventually met while Longo was in
prison.
Their relationship resulted in the book, “True
Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa.”
As we said, this isn’t the worse case of
identity theft, but it goes to show that if
you choose you can leave your current surroundings
and just start living as someone else.
Now we’ll get to some darker cases of identity
theft.
10.
Don’t leave your wallet in your car
One day a mother of four in the USA got a
call from child protection services saying
she was under investigation.
The mother, Anndorie Sachs, listened to the
person as they told her she was being watched
after giving birth to a child that had been
born with methamphetamine in its blood.
This came as a surprise to her as she hadn’t
given birth for quite a few years.
“I was absolutely floored, you would just
never imagine in a million years that something
could happen like this,” she later said
in a TV appearance.
What had happened is her car had been broken
into and her wallet was stolen.
The person who had stolen that wallet was
a pregnant drug addict.
That person had walked into a hospital with
Sach’s stolen driving license, given birth
to a child with meth in its system, and then
walked out.
Sachs was also left with a $10,000 bill to
pay and she had to clear her name after some
amount of stress.
She even had to take a DNA test just to prove
she wasn’t the mother of the child.
9.
Overconfidence
This is the story of a man called Todd Davis,
the CEO of an identity theft protection firm.
Davis was perhaps over confident when he began
an advertising campaign with his social security
number in full view.
He dared people to try and do anything with
that number.
So, people did just that, and Davis could
only watch on as $500 was taken as an advanced
loan using that number, while others, apparently
87 people in total, used his number.
8.
The Cheerleader
Did you ever want to know what it feels like
to be young again?
Well, that’s what a 33-year old woman in
the USA wanted when she got on the high school
cheerleading team.
Wendy Brown, according to The Atlantic, enrolled
in a school in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 2008.
She was 15, according to her ID, except she
was using one of her daughter’s IDs.
It worked for a while.
It’s said she attended classes, joined the
school cheerleading team and even attended
a pool party for that team.
She must have looked very young as this went
on for 18 days.
Alas, she was found out.
“I’m not a bad person, I just made a mistake,”
she later told the press as her trial began.
The Atlantic reported that she had a criminal
past, albeit containing nothing very serious.
It seems she had just wanted to be young again
and get on the cheerleading team because she
had had an embattled youth.
She just wanted another chance.
She wasn’t found guilty of her crime due
to mental defects, but she had to spend some
time in a mental health facility.
7.
Getting into school
A woman called Elizabeth Reed became a wanted
woman in the USA after using various people’s
names to get into university.
One of those names was of a missing woman,
so that didn’t go down well with police.
Apparently, the high school drop-out left
her family home and went on a journey throughout
the U.S. using different identities.
She would make up stories about herself, including
being a champion chess player.
But unlike many identity thieves, she didn’t
steal names to make a quick buck, instead
she used those names to educate herself.
She assumed the name Natalie Bowman in 2001
and passed the exams to get into California
State University.
She became a successful student, and joined
many debating teams.
She didn’t stop there, once becoming a student
with very good grades at Columbia University.
She was eventually arrested and sentenced
to 51 months in prison.
6.
The young boy who was a woman
In a similar case, but a more confounding
one, a woman from the Czech Republic became
a young boy for a while.
Barbora Skrlova was 33-years old when she
became a 13-year old Czech boy, a boy that
was missing at the time.
Under that identity she spent four months
schooling in Norway.
The woman had strapped back her breasts and
shaved her head and had called herself Adam.
How did teachers not see this?
A spokesperson for the school told the press,
“We did react to Adam's behavior.
But it's not easy to know.
Children at that age can be so different.”
Adam then went missing and the authorities
started a search, only when they found him,
he turned out to be a woman in her thirties.
That woman was then put under psychiatric
evaluation.
5.
Becoming yourself again
“It's the damnedest thing I ever heard of,”
police said about the case of this student.
His name was Li Ming and he was a graduate
student at West Chester University in the
USA.
During his studies he had spent a lot of money
on his credit card and he wasn’t quite sure
how he would pay the debt off.
So, he did what anyone else would do and faked
his own death.
He even got a friend to write an obituary
and send it to the local paper.
Li Ming was confident that he could then apply
for a duplicate birth certificate and also
get some more credit cards.
He thought it would be ok as in China his
name is very common.
But then he went to the department of motor
vehicles to apply for a new driver’s license
and the person there saw that someone with
the same name and identification had apparently
died nine months earlier.
Li Ming was then arrested.
4.
Fraud
An unfortunate California grandmother called
Margot Somerville was under investigation
in 2007 for what police thought was writing
a bunch of fraudulent checks in the USA and
getting away with many thousands of dollars.
Only the grandmother wasn’t at fault.
She had had her identity stolen by a woman
called Andrea Harris-Frazier.
She had taken Somerville’s identity by stealing
some of her documents.
The thing was, police were certain that the
grandmother was lying.
She later told the press, “The whole thing
was really ludicrous.
To be honest, if I hadn’t had the means
to hire a darned good lawyer, I probably would
have sat in jail for a very long time.”
In the end it worked out for her and Harris-Frazier
was charged with 19 felony counts of theft
and criminal impersonation.
Still, Somerville was jailed for a while and
treated pretty badly it seems.
Can you imagine how frustrating that would
be?
3.
Neighbors from hell
Like many cases we have already talked about,
this could happen to anyone.
The story is of a couple in the USA called
Lara Love and David Jackson.
This couple were involved in a massive identity
theft scheme and their neighbors were their
victims.
They would assume the identities of their
neighbors using different tactics.
It’s said they would steal mail from nearby
mail boxes, and also gain information by tapping
into neighbor’s wi fi.
Later people on the street noticed they were
receiving letters from banks and other organizations
that they had not joined.
The couple bought stuff on Amazon and also
used money on gambling sites, which in all
amounted to about $15,000.
The neighbors soon got together and realized
something was afoot and it was likely someone
close by that was to blame.
The couple were charged with theft and also
admitted to 30 counts of possessing others’
identifying information.
2.
The bus boy
This is the case of a man called Abraham Abdallah.
In 2001 he was arrested after impersonating
some of the world’s most famous people.
Some of those were Steven Spielberg, Oprah
Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros and
Michael Bloomberg.
Using the web and also the local Brooklyn
library the 32-year old managed to find information
about these people and then pretend to be
them.
According to The Guardian this clever young
man would then use, “web-enabled mobile
phones and virtual voicemail services to track
packages ordered in his victims' names and
pick up messages from anywhere in the US.”
He also tried to move their money from Wall
Street firms and also just run up bills.
In all, the media reports that he stole the
identity of about 200 celebrities.
Later an NYPD detective said, “He's the
best I ever faced.”
Not bad for a bus boy.
The Imposter
We started with a true story turned into a
movie and we will finish with one.
The movie is called The Imposter and if you
saw it you will no doubt have had your mind
blown.
It’s the story of a Frenchman called Frédéric
Bourdin, a man who it seems had been impersonating
people all his life.
But his piece de resistance was when he became
a missing boy called Nicholas Barclay.
Barclay had gone missing in the U.S. aged
13, and then three years later Bourdin turned
up on the doorstep of the family saying he
was their son.
He had first been discovered in a small Spanish
village, after which the family brought him
home to the U.S.
He even had a light French accent and didn’t
look all that much like the son, while Bourdin
was 7 years older than he should have been.
Still the family took him in.
His act was eventually unmasked after a few
months.
Sadly as we’ve seen identity theft is on
the rise, and with so many ways to have your
personal information stolen, it can be overwhelming
trying to protect yourself from digital crooks.
That’s why Dashlane has your back though-
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and sold on the dark web so you can take steps
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Don’t be a victim, head on over to www.dashlane.com/infographics
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Can you think of any better cases?
Have you been a victim of identity theft?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show
The Rise and Fall of Dark Web's Silk Road
. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.
