In a world where it’s so easy to steal someone’s identity, we bring you the 8 biggest identity theft cases in American history. Identity theft is sadly the fastest growing crime in America. It is a serious threat that causes great damage to a large number of people, both financial and emotional. The definition of identity theft explains it as the theft of personally identifying information including a person’s name, date of birth, driver’s license, social number, etc.
Identity theft cases occur on a daily basis. According to ISAI 2010, every year about 15 million people report being victims of identity theft. The total financial loss every year sums up to $50 billion which is not a small amount. Identity theft has spread worldwide, but America is among the countries with the highest rates of identity theft in the world. What contributed to the spreading of identity theft worldwide is the Internet infrastructure and online banking, which is why this fastest growing crime is not only a problem of the developing countries anymore. Online identity theft cases are becoming a common thing in today’s world. UK, Singapore, China, UAE, Brazil as well as India and Mexico are alongside the United States when it comes to countries with the highest rates of identity theft.
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Identity theft is often associated with credit card fraud where the criminal gains the power to take control of your accounts and your life. These frauds are so common nowadays that we ought to be very careful. Want to know what other easiest frauds to commit and make money are? Take a look at the article to find out.
In recent years, there has been a number of cases of identity theft worth mentioning today. There were some famous identity theft cases where people gained access to celebrities accounts and could transfer huge amounts of money, and there were some peculiar cases as well. One of the those most intriguing cases to us while researching this topic certainly was the case of Dr. Gerald Barnes, currently serving the sentence for identity theft.
All the cases listed in our article today caused great damage to numerous people including death. Countless credit card reports have been stolen and false tax claims made. Remember to be cautious when entering your personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers as this can enable criminals to steal your information and gain access to your account. BBC, Reuters, and Michigan Consumer Credit Lawyers helped us compile the information for this list of real-life examples of identity theft.
We bring you the biggest identity theft cases in American history.
8. The Case of Professor Raphael Golb
This case of identity theft is rather strange or perhaps less terrible than others on our list, but it definitely is big as Raphael Golb, a religious study professor, was charged with 51 counts of identity theft. Yes, that’s true. Although Golb didn’t actually steal anyone’s money, he was also charged with aggravated harassment, criminal impersonation, forgery, and unauthorized use of computers in the library in New York City. Golb was religious study professor, son of a respected scholar. What was his aim? He engaged in an online campaign using fake names in order to defend his father’s intellectual contributions and theories that had to do with Dead Sea Scrolls. Apparently, only a small number of scholars agreed with his father and Golb wanted to change that. He chose a rather curious way and ended up using 51 different identities.
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7. The Case of Abraham Abdallah
We are continuing our list of biggest identity theft cases in American history with Abraham Abdallah, who worked as a restaurant busboy, and was in charge of an Internet-based identity theft scheme — one of the most elaborate in recent years. Using the identities of some of the richest people in the world he was able to gain access to credit card companies, banks, etc. He was able to steal from famous people such as Steven Spielberg, the CNN Founder Ted Turner, and many others including Warren Buffet. He did all this from a library in Brooklyn, New York City. He was finally arrested after the FBI got information from a financial institution that claimed a client of theirs did not request a substantial transfer of money.
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6. The Case of Gerald Barnbaum
The case of German Barnbaum is a complicated and long story of former pharmacists who pretended to be a doctor between 1971 and 2000. After his license had been revoked after Medicaid fraud charges in 1971, Barnbaum stole the identity of a doctor in Stockton — Gerald Barnes and started working as a physician in the Los Angeles and Southern California area. His lack of medical knowledge led to the death of a young man, John McKenzie who died from an undiagnosed Type I diabetes. When the blood test came several days later, the results showed severe hyperglycemia. Barnbaum’s assistant called the police and in 1980 Barnbaum was charged with second-degree murder eventually sentenced to only 3 years and 4 months. Barnbaum continued with the fraud upon leaving prison but was soon caught again. The imposter continued to seek work as a physician and earned over $400,000 during the period. His final fraud was when he was employed as a physician at Executive Health Group, a clinic that handled physical checkups on FBI agents. He tried to defend by faking a heart attack while he was being questioned but eventually pled guilty and was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison. But this seemed too easy and so the imposter escaped from prison but was quickly captured.
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Up next on our list we have top five biggest identity theft cases in American history.
5. Identity Theft in Atlanta, Georgia
In 2014, a man was arrested for a fraud and identity theft filing false tax claims. Mauricio Warner, sentenced to 20 years in prison for the damage caused, managed to pile up more than $5 million by filing false tax returns using victims’ information. What he did was falsely apply for “Free Government Money” to gain money. He was ordered to pay a total of $5,041,869 and all his bank accounts were seized.
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4. False Tax Claims in 2014
Another case of identity theft and filing false tax claims occurred in 2014 when siblings Harvey James and Jacqueline Stanton, and a postal worker Vernon Harrison, used prisoner identities in their scams. They used inmate information from different sources in order to file false tax returns. Apparently, one of the sources included an individual from the Alabama Department Correction. Their scams proved to be very fruitful amounting to over $1 million in false tax returns until they were seized of course. All three participants were sentenced to prison.
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We are continuing our list of biggest identity theft cases in American history with one of the identity theft court cases.
3. The Case of Senita Birt Dill and Ronald Jeremy Knowles
Yet another case of filing false tax returns on our list of biggest identity theft cases in American history. The couple, Senita a Birt Dill and Ronald Jeremy Knowles, received the astonishing $3.5 million by filing over 1,000 false tax returns. The couple was renting a home surrounded by many vacation houses and used their addresses for the refunds. They also used fake income information to get bigger refunds. The couple was charged with aggravated identity theft, conspiracy, and access device fraud. Both were sentenced to prison, Senita for 27 years, and Ronald for 5 years and 10 months.
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2. The Case of Philip Cummings
Philip Cummings was a help desk employee in a Long Island, New York company. His company provided special software to its client companies such as banks, etc. Cummings had access to personal consumer information such as codes and passwords giving him the ability to download consumer credit reports at any time. When approached by some Nigerian nationals willing to buy those copies of credit reports, he agreed. He continued to sell them the copies for 2 after he left the company. The damage he caused was considerable. The case was solved by the Federal authorities after a major company discovered that credit reports have been downloaded without permission. Other companies reported exactly the same thing and eventually, the investigation led to Philip Cummings.
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And now, let’s see the number one on our list of biggest identity theft cases in American history.
1. The Apple Case or “Operation Swiper“
One of the biggest identity theft cases in American history took place 10 years ago, in 2008. The theft included a $13 million crime ring specializing in selling Apple electronics overseas, according to Reuters. This operation indicted 111 people from Queens, New York. Reuters further writers that these crime rings or their bosses to be more specific received blank credit cards from their foreign suppliers from Russia, Libya, Lebanon, and China. Then, these bosses hired people to pose for jobs like waiters, etc., in order to use electronic devices and steal information from customer credit cards. They also forged credit cards and driver’s licenses. What they did is use these forged credit cards to shop all around the U.S. and then sell these items overseas. One of the biggest identity theft cases ever to occur in American history involved Amar Singh, one of the four bosses, and Neha Punjani Singh, a married couple who then plead guilty for the scam.
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