Tag Archive for 'Identity Fraud'

Subjects with Multiple SSN’s

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on July 9, 2008
in Identity Fraud, Identity Theft and Private Investigator
. 0 Comments

In Canada, it is rare to find somebody with two Social Insurance Numbers (SIN).  Where this happens it may be a case of clerical error or a reference to a former SIN appropriated by an identity thief. The former reason is extremely rare. In thirty years I have only encountered this once. The Canadian SIN is used as an identifier less than the SSN is in the USA.

However, in the USA the case is somewhat different. According to Susan Daniels, of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. in Chardon Ohio, when searching through database aggregators such as IRB, it is common to find a subject referenced with two or three Social Security Numbers (SSN). Here are some of the reasons a person may show-up with multiple SSN’s:

  • a wife’s or child’s SSN could end up with father’s name
  • a parent’s SSN could show up with a child
  • the subject bought something with someone else and the SSNs could end up with each other’s name
  • the database producer is relating several SSN’s to one address
  • an error by whoever entered the data

Susan Daniels of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. (9754 Thwing Road Chardon, OH 44024, Tel.:440.286.4072) has been a Private Investigator for 15 years.

Identity-theft Protection for Canadians

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on July 1, 2008
in Canada, Identity Fraud and Identity Theft
. 0 Comments

You don’t have to spend $100 to $200 a year to defend yourself from identity theft at the level of protection that a paid service offers. You can do almost everything the services do, for free.

DIY Identity-theft Protection: A 12-step Program

Tombstoning Still Works

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on June 18, 2008
in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft
. 0 Comments

B. C. man uses stolen identity to amass $1M

Went By ‘Zino’; Police uncover his crimes when ‘man purse’ stolen
Rob Shaw, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, June 12, 2008

VICTORIA - For the past 17 years, “Zino” has lived a seemingly ordinary life in Saskatchewan and B. C. By the age of 40, he had bought houses, opened bank accounts and collected credit cards. His real estate holdings across B. C., and more than 14 credit and bank cards, gave him assets and credit in excess of $1-million.

The only problem — “Zino” does not exist…

Mr. Nardi’s real name contained a long history of contacts with police. And so the identity of “Zino” gave him a clean slate from which to travel and accumulate assets unnoticed

Chinese Spies Steal US Passport Smart Chip

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on April 22, 2008
in Espionage, Forgery, Identity Fraud, Industrial Espionage, Intelligence Services, Security, Terrorism and U.S.A.
. 0 Comments

The US authorities demand that everybody entering their country have a passport and identity documents compliant with their security standards, but when it comes to their own passports, they have a much lower security standard than they demand of other countries.

Outsourcing passports ‘profound liability’

The blank passports travel to Europe where a microchip is inserted in the back cover and then onto Thailand where they are fitted with a radio antenna. The Netherlands company that makes the covers for the passport said in October that China stole the technology for the microchips, the Times said.

Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security

The Government Printing Office’s decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.

Business Identity Theft

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on March 11, 2008
in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Dirty Tricks, Fraud, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Methods and Private Investigator
. 0 Comments

Infamous hacker Kevin Poulson paid the defaulted Yellow Page accounts of escort services to get their defunct telephone numbers reactivated. He collected the profits and when the police became interested, only the original advertiser was on record with the telephone company. I once saw this done in a home renovation scam.

In Cynthia Hetherington’s excellent book, Business Background Investigations: Tools and Techniques for Solution Driven Due Diligence, she tells of a group of crooks who moved into an office recently vacated by an insurance company. They took-up the old phone number and began selling insurance.

When new policy holders complained about bad service to the insurance company’s head office, the scam was revealed, but the crooks had moved on.

It’s not just people who have their identity stolen.

Faked-Death & Impersonation-of-the-Dead Fraud

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on February 6, 2008
in Canada, Forgery, Fraud, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Private Investigator, Sources, U.S.A. and United Kingdom
. 1 Comment

We have all heard of the faked-death scams to defraud insurance companies, escape prosecution, or to start over. The latter always happens in the aftermath of mass-casualty events like train wrecks, fires, and terrorist attacks. But what about the reverse — pretending to be somebody who has died?

This is not uncommon simply because it is so difficult to uncover the truth of someone’s identity and it has been so throughout my thirty years of Canadian experience.

In Canada, registering deaths is a provincial responsibility. The national vital statistics death registration system run by Statistics Canada does not include the deceased’s name or date of birth. There are no public search facilities for determining if the identity that you are presented with is that of a dead person.

In the U.S.A., the Social Security Administration Death Master file includes 98% of deaths of persons who participated in the Social Security program. This is may be searched at several internet sites.

In the UK, Smee & Ford Limited created a database called Mortascreen, which was used to screen direct mail lists for deceased people. This data was augmented and is now used as the foundation for Halo, a database that covers 85% of the deaths occurring annually in the UK. It is updated monthly and includes historical data to make it useful for verifying a person’s identity.

According to the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service, CIFAS, since 2001, impersonation of the dead is Britain’s fastest growing identity theft crime. The latest research suggests the problem has been under-stated by 3.5 times and revised statistics now indicate that 70,000 families experienced the pain of discovering their loved one had been impersonated after their death, to open accounts such as credit cards and loans.

According to the Home Office figures on crime in England and Wales in Jan 2003, “Between April 2000 and March 2001, the passport agency detected 1,484 fraudulent applications of which 301 used the identities of the deceased.”

I suspect that Canada may have a problem with this type of identity theft, but there is no way of knowing the extent of the the problem.

Profile of Identity Theives

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on November 2, 2007
in Fraud, Identity Fraud and Identity Theft
. 0 Comments

A recent study by the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection suggests that less than one fifth of criminals get their data from the internet. In most cases it they get their data by re-routing mail, dumpster diving and intercepting mail.

The study is available at the Center for Identity management and Information Protection (CIMIP) but unfortunately they what identifying personal information before you access the study.

A summary of the study may be found on Yahoo! and at CIMIP.