The Worst Identity Theft Scams of the Year
Identity theft. Those two words can strike fear in the hearts of card holders everywhere. It seems like you can’t trust anyone these days. Even friends and co-workers can access your information and open a line of credit in your name. Worse, businesses that drop the ball on their security measures have been breached by hackers to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Victims of identity theft usually do no wrong, but suffer the consequences anyway.
Here are three of the highest-profile identity theft schemes from the past year.
The Jetsetters
Jocelyn Kirsch and Edward Anderton were young, nice-looking, and had bright futures ahead of them. But they chose to use their powers for evil when they started taking the identities of friends and neighbors to pay for trips to the Eiffel Tower and other exotic locales. These college-aged fraudsters used their ill-gotten funds to finance a $3,000 a month luxury apartment and other high-dollar purchases. They were arrested in December when they went to retrieve a parcel of expensive lingerie that had been ordered in a neighbor’s name. Now the two are headed to court to enter guilty pleas. The moral of this story? If you steal identities, you will get caught. If you steal identities from people you see every day, you will get caught fast.
