Who says justice is blind? Sometimes she can see pretty clearly!

In this case, a judge decided to do more than follow the letter of the law regarding sentencing guidelines. In Louisiana, the court flexed some judicial muscle and threw an entire bookshelf  at a defendant.

According to a report retrieved recently from All Headline News:

“Baton Rouge, LA,  – A man who led an identity theft and bribery scheme was sentenced to more than three centuries in prison on Wednesday.

A federal judge decided that Robert Thompson, also known as John Lawson, should serve 309 years for leading a conspiracy to use confidential financial information of over 60 individuals, businesses, churches and financial institutions to steal money and goods.

The sentence is believed to be the longest handed down to a white collar defendant in the history of the Middle District of Louisiana.

Prosecutors say the scheme began in June 2006 and included an attempt to steal $20 million from one victim. Thompson bribed a prison guard while he was an inmate at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center with $10,000 in return for cell phones he used for his crimes.

Thompson was indicted in 2008 along with 10 other people for identity theft. He pleaded guilty a year later to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, computer fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

The 43-year old from Zachary, LA, reportedly collapsed during his sentencing. He recovered in time to hear the sentence from Chief U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Tyson.”

This low life’s repeated attempts to defraud a long list of victims only goes to prove the well known maxim that “crime doesn’t pay”.  In this case perhaps for only a brief moment, crime DID pay.

The problem is that eventually we have to pay it all back.

This chilling story from the New York Post reinforces the fact that identity theft  is not simply  a harmless white collar crime.

“A man charged in an identity theft scheme has been accused of killing two of his victims.

An indictment unsealed Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn charges Dmitriy Yakovlev in the murder of a missing Russian-language translator. He’s also accused of killing a man whose remains were found in New Jersey in 2006.

Yakovlev and his wife were already facing charges they used a credit card with the missing translator’s name to go on shopping sprees. Last year, the FBI searched the basement of the couple’s Brooklyn home for the victim’s body, but never reported finding anything.

The indictment added charges alleging Yakovlev also stole the identities of two men who disappeared in 2003 and 2005, and that he killed one of them.

There was no immediate response to a message left with Yakovlev’s attorney.”

This tragic story underscores the urgent need for each of us to become and  remain smaller targets for ID thieves.

“How do I become a smaller target” you ask?

You become a smaller target by establishing and maintaining your own financial literacy about safeguarding personal information. This ensures that you will be a smaller target for both the opportunistic  amateurs and the career criminals.

Make no mistake. The financial safety habits you develop now could literally save your life in the future.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/prosecutors_identity_theft_victims_AITfK5UoqA0eBK29NhMotL#ixzz0hTWbDusQ

Despite the conventional wisdom (including my own) which says most identity thieves never get caught, one high profile flim-flam artist is about to get the big chill.

According to a report originating from Denver’s NBC-TV news affiliate KUSA, one of the most prolific financial criminals in U.S. history is about to be sentenced to a maximum of up to 36 years in prison.

The person awaiting sentencing is 38 year old Shonya Young. Ms. Young was part of an identity theft ring that was busted after stealing the purse of the wife of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

According to reports, Young is the person who actually  drained Mrs. Bernanke’s checking account after her purse was swiped from a Washington D.C. area Starbucks.

To lessen the chances that you could become the next victim, consider leaving the following items in a secure place and not in your purse, wallet or backpack:

- Checkbook
- Unused credit/debit cards
- Social Security card
- Passport

Three kinds of awareness are helpful here. The first is an awareness of your possessions including personal items like laptops, backpacks, wallets and purses.

Second, be aware of your physical surroundings involving transactional privacy while using smartphones, ATM’s  and WI-FI hotspots.

The third is financial reporting awareness, which comes from closely monitoring your credit card and banking statements to look for irregularities on at least a monthly basis.

There is no substitute for awareness coupled with action in order to detect, deflect and destroy the efforts of  identity thieves who are still out there lurking in the wings.

Microsoft  recently announced that it has adapted its internal software development model to accommodate something called Agile Development.

What that means to you and me is that the next generation of Microsoft products for the web, may not be developed with the giant’s historical approach regarding security.

Agile development leans toward the collaborative approach to software development, similar to the processes made popular by Six Sigma and the Toyota 5S methodology.

Network World reports:  “This makes sense as Agile’s focus on teamwork and communication leaves plenty of room for improvisation….While Agile development has demonstrated its ROI value, the emphasis was always on rapid application and not necessarily security.”

We all know that there are plenty of cyber-kooks lurking out there and waiting to get us. These looming threats have never been worse. The good news is that the selection of security suites we can purchase to keep our systems safe has never been better.

This is why everyone needs an anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection plan.  Any program you purchase from any vendor could leave you vulnerable to attack.

If you suspect a rogue program, Microsoft’s security site can probably give you the peace of mind that all weary web travelers need from time to time.

Those of us who are not iPhone owners, often laugh at the giddiness and joy which many tech-savvy, self-absorbed Apple devotees experience while using their phone’s latest app.

Despite the convenience and absolute coolness embedded in these ultra-smart phones, some of our greatest privacy rights go out the window when users “opt-in” during the registration process for a wide variety of applications.

ComputerWorld magazine reported this week:

“After the recent hubbub surrounding the Palm Pre and its daily sharing of user location and other information with Palm, …the iPhone Dev team has revealed that some third-party apps for the iPhone act in a somewhat similar fashion.”

It seems that: “code from the analytics  firm Pinch Media within some iPhone apps is specifically designed to track your geographic location through time, then upload that data to Pinch Media. They…note that the app will first ask permission to use your location information. Once this permission is granted, user location information is transmitted to whomever is tracking the app’s usage….Gender and birthday information may also be gathered and sent, if available.”

Although many specifics like your home address or business location may not be collected and stored, your actual latitude and longitude over time can make it easy to determine your sleeping and work coordinates.

Many question just how broadly the term “spy-ware” should be applied to analytics practices like this one. It has been observed that generally, users are never given the opportunity to “opt out”.

Like the Hotel California, you can check out anytime you like (turn off your phone), but you can NEVER leave.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, weighed in this week on the growing need for reshaping federal law in the local fight against crimes involving identity issues.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Sheriff Baca traveled to Washington, DC to testify before a Senate panel on the matter.  At issue is whether the Real ID act, passed in 2005 should be revised to allow individual states more flexibility in order to comply with federal deadlines.

The Times reported:

“Baca, who leads the largest sheriff’s department in the nation — with more than 18,000 officers and staff — said he hoped to express the  “critical need” for national ID standards from a local law enforcement perspective… He noted that local law enforcement personnel are typically the first to experience suspicious activities and respond to any terrorist event and that local law enforcement routinely deals with counterfeit identification, often impossible to detect.”

Sheriff Baca supports a revision of the current REAL ID Act, which essentially creates a national identification card for US citizens and puts those without one under greater scrutiny and suspicion.

One of the challenges is that the cost of implementation could run as high as $11 billion over five years according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

Both Baca and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have expressed support for a revision called PASS ID, which she claims would eliminate the need for states to spend money on untested technologies while including consumer privacy protection assurances.

Sheriff Baca testified that PASS ID is more realistic than REAL ID and he backed Napolitano’s core belief that these revisions to REAL ID are critical to improving identification security.

In a post 9/11 world, realism and improvement should be non-negotiable.

Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum met in Davos, Switzerland for their annual  conclave. The topic of internet crime  drew the attention of attendees, leading a panel to take a look at the issue of international cyber-crime .

One startling fact emerged from their look into fraud, identity theft and organized crime. According to the experts, which included representatives from Mozilla, McAfee and Microsoft, 2008 saw more internet-based crime than the preceding five years combined! 

The WEF considers itself “the foremost global community of business, political, intellectual and other leaders of society who are committed to improving the state of the world.”

They go on to describe themselves as “an independent, not for profit organization that brings these leaders together to work on projects that improve people’s lives.”

The Davos attendees concluded that due to the organized criminal creation of large scale cyber-attacks, these incidents have moved beyond the mere nuisance of teenage hackers bored with nothing else to do, to a modern “organized criminality” that has grown well beyond garden variety vandalism.

The Forum estimates that internet crime alone, packs a whopping $1 trillion dollar price tag. With no clear consensus on how to attack the problem, the panel suggested solutions ranging from the creation of a nearly “totalitarian” worldwide governing body similar to the World Health Organization, to a diluted form of self-policing.

Perhaps an international outbreak of “willful blindness” has led us to this point. Hopefully the international criminal pleasure cruise that world economies are on,  is headed for some immediate course correction.

“But your honor, I didn’t know…..”

The Associated Press reported this week that the United States Supreme Court has agreed to look into several cases in which undocumented foreign workers used false identities to obtain employment.

Federal prosecutors in these cases are adding more severe identity theft charges to the immigration violations they are uncovering, prompting defense lawyers to cry foul.

The government has persuaded defendants to plead guilty to lesser immigration violation charges in order to avoid the more serious identity theft charges which carry mandatory prison sentences.

In several cases, defendants have been convicted of aggravated identity theft. The defense is arguing that the more serious charges are unfounded because defendants did not knowingly use stolen Social Security numbers.

Federal appeals courts around the country have divided on the issue, which will now get the attention of the high court next year. The Bush administration claims that federal law makes it illegal to “knowingly” use another person’s identification. In 2004, President Bush signed a law requiring tougher penalties for those convicted of identity theft.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security now serves as a “clearinghouse” for employers seeking to verify the identity of job applicants presenting identifying documents. Huge raids against illegal workers in Texas and elsewhere, make this case one to watch.