3.3 Million Affected in Mass Idenity Theft

In what is believe to be the largest ever breach of secure and private information, nearly 3.3 million people with student loans became the victims of a mass identity theft.

Names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal data were stolen using a portable media device. The Educational Credit Management Corp - a nonprofit guarantor of federal student loans is location in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In a growing string of mass identity theft, last weeks theft at ECMC is just another incident. Earlier this month, a former employee of HSBC Holdings allegedly stole data on 24,000 Swiss private bank accounts. In 2005, an estimated 40 million accounts serviced by the credit card payment processing company, CardSystems were compromised.

ECMC services more than $11 billion in student loans. The 320 employees at the St. Paul headquarters all have key card access and their security is being reviewed.

Read more...

Medical Information Theft Rising

Criminals have devised a way to have expensive medical procedures billed to you. They set up fake clinics to bill for phony treatments. Thieves may also impersonate a patient, and there are some medical workers willing to download your records to sell.

Pam Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum, a non-profit consumer-research group based in San Diego, CA believes the rise of digital records is a large factor in the rise of medical information theft, "Once the files are in electronic form, the crime scales up quickly."

Patients medical records can be altered to reflect diseases and treatments they never had. The thief may change the patients address so they will not be aware of the charges and changes to their medical history.

Medical Identity Theft is about 2.5 times more costly than other types of ID frauds, said James Van Dyke, Javelin president - because the medical data can be used for a much longer period of time before the criminal is caught.

The average fraud involving health information as $12,000 compared with $,841 for general identity theft.

Read more...

E-Verify Cannot Detect Identity Fraud

E-Verify is the government program that verifies employment authorizations of US citizen's and non-citizen's alike.

The system is fairly simple to use, though there are strict regulations surrounding the program. It has recently come under fire for inaccuracies. There is some indication, however, these inaccuracies are based solely on the fact that Human Resources representatives are not doing their share in verifying that documentation is legal and legitimate.

E-Verify is an excellent tool, but if an undocumented worker is borrowing a documented, authorized works papers, identification, and identity, there is truly no way to detect that they are fraudulent.

It is strongly advised that recruiters familiarize themselves with each type of documentation.

Liberty is happy to provide sample documentation upon request.

Read more...

Missing Convictions, Why Database Searches are not Foolproof

It is always interesting to discuss what people do for a living. How we all come together from different walks of life and how each of participates in making the world work in it's strange and unique way.

I love being among a group of people that are casual acquaintances. Inevitably, the subject of profession arises. Pre-employment background investigations always receives a raised eyebrow or two, and the "wink" and elbow jab - "Don't pull my information! You don't want to know!"

I tend to think these types of comments are usually joking, however, one night a casual acquaintance had several probing questions for me. Turns out he was able to obtain a job though he had a felony level conviction on his record. He was probing me to find out how that could have happened,

"It's been so hard finding work since it happened, I know they did a background check, but I didn't disclose the information! And they didn't find it!"

The company probably ran a criminal "Database" search. Database searches are inexpensive, making them a great pre-screening tool. But more and more, especially as the economy continues to struggle, companies are relying solely on these searches to weed out former criminals.

But obviously, they're not catching everybody. Lucky for a few of the unemployed. When I asked my acquaintance the nature of his crime? Felony level fraud: Identity Theft.

He is currently employed at your local bank.

Read more...

Austin Legislation Threatens Criminal Records Research

Legislation is being proposed in Austin to eliminate date of births from the Texas Public Information Act. Such legislation would effectively remove one of the most crucial pieces of information used by journalists and other agencies to conduct criminal background checks.

Senator Jane Olsen of Flower Mound, TX said, "The goal of this legislation is to protect sensitive information that could put our public employees in harm's way. Dates of birth should be protected from identity thieves, who would love to have this information to unlock our personal finances."

While Olsen's statement is true, that little piece of seemingly insignificant language unlocks a surprising amount of information about a person. Removing it will do little protect employees from identity theft.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, most identity theft results from a stolen credit card, government ID or bank statement – not through a public records request. And Social Security numbers, home addresses and information about public employees' family members already are exempt from disclosure in Texas.

Many news organizations use these public records to check up on government agencies. News organizations have exposed the lack of criminal records checks done by these agencies and alerted the public to criminals who are working among them. Checks and balances are necessary and this legislation seeks to eliminate them.

Read more...

Dallas School District Issues Fake Social Security Numbers

The Dallas Independent School district has been providing fake social security number to foreign citizens in an attempt to get them on the payroll quickly. Some of the numbers used were already assigned to citizens living elsewhere. In some cases, the certification office used the numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires.

In an internal report issued in September, the district’s investigative office said that the Texas Education Agency learned of the bogus practice in 2004 and informed DISD that the practice “was illegal.” How long DISD has been issuing the fake numbers is unclear, and it is unknown how many have been issued. The report indicates, however, that the practice went on for many years and was discontinued only last summer.

The fake numbers were issued as a stopgap to expedite the hiring process when hiring positions particularly for bilingual education. The individuals receiving the bogus SSN’s were supposed to tell the officials when they receive their real numbers so they fake ones could be replaced. The investigation found no indication that the fake numbers were provided to the Teacher Retirement System, the IRS, or the SSA.

In July, the district confirmed that 26 of the false numbers were in use after accessing the Social Security Administration database. Liberty accesses a similar system through our partner, Form I9, which verifies the eligibility of a name and social security number electronically. It is unknown at this time whether anybody holding those numbers has been negatively affected.

Though the school district was told to stop issuing the numbers in 2004, the Texas Education Agency’s director, Doug Phillips said his office believed the practice had been stopped at that time. He said Thursday that he was unaware of a law that forbid issuing fake Social Security numbers, “We knew it looked bad and smelled bad. That was the first time we ever heard of that one.”

It is unknown at this time what, if any, action DISD will face for these charges.

Read more...

Job Scams on the Rise

As the unemployment rate rises, job seekers are facing tougher and tougher competition. More than 1 million jobs alone have been cut this year. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) began receiving calls about a Texas company scamming job applicants.



Antonio Sillano (AKA: Allasondra Sillanogarry) allegedly made thousands of dollars by duping job applicants into paying for their own background investigation after being promised jobs that didn't exist. Hundreds of applicants were conned into paying the upfront fee of $80-$150.

After the fee was ponied up, the applicants never received word from the company's HR department, and the jobs never materialized.

Sillano first came under investigation in February 2007. The BBB had complaints on their reliability report since that time that they were unable to resolve. Sillano was arrested by Memphis police after advertising jobs there. Sillano is accused of identity theft and the Memphis police believe Sillano has operated under various aliases for some time.

The Better Business Bureau urges job seeks to keep a watchful eye out for scams. With the demand for jobs out there, it is safe to say we will see more of this type of behavior. Applicants shouldn't have to pay for their background investigations, the employers typically takes care of that. If you feel you are a victim of a scam, contact the credit bureaus and your own credit card company for further investigation.

Read more...

ALL Government Officials Should Be Checked, Even Those Who Aren't Being Paid

Phelicia Williams, 26, was interned at the mayor's office in Oakland, CA for 10 months and was blatantly not screened prior to starting.

The mayor's office did not check Williams' criminal record prior to bringing her on as an unpaid intern. Mayor of Oakland, Ron Dellums' spokesperson said in an official statement that the mayor has no plans to change its policy of not running background checks on intern applicants and volunteers.

The citizens of Oakland should be outraged. A simple screen could of alerted Dellums' office of Williams multiple counts of identity fraud before she stole some 100 personal checks from last year's Mayor's Holiday Toy Drive.

Williams was arrested on October 12 for suspicion of charging over $10,000 on the company card of a former employer. She was on probation for forgery at the time of her arrest.

On her job application for the Mayor, Williams claimed to have no prior convictions. The Mayor's office defended their stance, stating the interns go through a vetting process similar to what the candidate's themselves go through.

Hopefully, the elected officials are better behaved than Ms. Phelicia Williams.

Read more...

Background Screens Only Protect You at the Front Door

Pre-employment background screening is an excellent way to determine of the applicant in front of you is the right fit for the position you are offering. You can determine all sorts of facts of their life down to what their credit report looks like and rest assured that you have made a good hiring decision. But really, background screening is only the first line of defense against criminal behavior in the work place. Background screening only detects known criminals, it cannot reveal the intentions of a criminal mind that has yet to reveal itself.

It is imperative for any size company to keep a watchful eye on their employees and on their bottom lines, especially with today's financial woes, one can not be too careful. Running random drug testing programs is an excellent way to ensure the new hires are taking their jobs seriously and aren't trying to dupe the system, as are post- employment criminal background searches that can check up on your what your new employees have been up to - and if they've gotten into any trouble - since you put them on payroll.

But a company can go further, and keep itself ahead of the technology curve by creating tough company policies about legal, ethical, security, and productivity uses of the technology available to their employees. Companies are encouraged to develop policies regarding privacy, appropriate use, intellectual property protection, and they are encouraged to issue statements detailing the practices behind said technologies. The policies and statements should be reviewed once a year, at minimum, to keep up with the every changing plane of technology.

Today, it's almost a given that there needs to be policy regarding email and instant messaging. Less well thought-out arenas for policy include blogs and social networking sites. Both are wildly popular and useful knowledge sharing platforms, however, there are hundreds of blogs about companies with employees, workers and former employees hashing it out in a community centered environment that is prone to leaking confidential information that the company would not want released. As well with information, however inadvertently it may be, that is posted on Myspace.com.

Employers need to realize that with the great leaps forward we have taken, the holes of vulnerability have gotten larger and harder to maintain. One may not be able to stop someone from posting private information, but it would be nice to feel comfortable taking action against that person.

Read more...

Insider Posts Personally Identifiable Information and Threatens Lives

Hired in August of 2001, Mr. Steven William Sutcliffe refused to provide the HR Department of Global Crossing Development Company with his Social Security Number. A criminal background search later revealed he failed to disclose his criminal records as well. Mr. Sutcliffe was terminated immediately.

Upon termination, Mr. Sutcliffe began picketing Global Crossing carrying a sign bearing the address of a website he launched against the company. “On this website, Defendant displayed Global Crossing employees’ personal information, including payroll information, social security numbers, birth dates, and residential addresses, with some of this information hyperlinked to an article about identity theft.”

On that website, Sutcliffe posted over 1000 of his former co-workers Personally Identifiable Information (PII) including payroll information, home residences, and social security numbers with links to identify theft information sites. When served with a restraining order, Sutcliffe posted threats against the agent who served him, “Our paths are now crossed and we are forever joined . . . to deal with that I am going to make you a one time offer. If I never see or hear from or of you again, I will forget you . . . . However, if I do ever hear your name mentioned against me ever again I will personally add you to my domain list. I think you understand the issues now enough to understand what this means. If I ever see you near my family again, and I know how to stalk too, I will kill you. That’s my offer.”

Sutcliffe was found to be subject to federal subject-matter jurisdiction for the interstate transfer of PII, a serious federal charge. The case is in appeal, but Global Crossing could have avoided the situation all together had they completed proper background examination prior to employment. Further protections, such as information documentation and security to protect employees, effective controls and exit procedures, as well as technology controls to limit accessibility would have gone a long way to prevent Sutcliffe from inflicting the damage he did.

Read more...