Tuesday, March 20, 2001

Identity theft: Forbes-ing a head? In RISKS, we have for many years been warning about the burgeoning increase in identity theft. The following case could foster a broader awareness of the depth of the problem, but then again most folks still seem to have their heads in the sand -- unless they have already been burned. Abraham Abdallah was arrested on 7 Mar 2001, a 32-year-old Brooklyn NY high-school dropout working as a busboy, and already a convicted swindler. Although he was arrested as he was picking up equipment for making bogus credit cards, he is suspected of already having stolen millions of dollars. In his possession were SSNs, addresses, and birthdates of 217 people whose names appeared in a Forbes Magazine itemization of the 400 richest people in the U.S. He reportedly also had over 400 stolen credit-card numbers, and had used computers in his local library to access of the Web for information gathering. He is being held on bail of $1M. His activities were detected after an e-mail request to transfer $10M from a Merrill Lynch account, whereupon authorities found mailboxes he had rented in various names and other evidence. His defense attorney said Abdallah is innocent, and that prosecutors had ``made an unfair leap from possession of this information to an inference that there was an attempt to take money.'' [PGN-ed from a variety of sources, including an AP item by Tom Hays http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/business/docs/forbes21.htm; Thanks to Dave Stringer-Calvert and to Michael Perkins at Red Herring] ["Peter G. Neumann" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 29] 0:00 # G!