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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Convicted ID Thief, Tax Fraudster Now Fugitive

Summary: An Ohio man, Lance Ealy, was convicted on all 46 charges, including aggravated identity theft and wire and mail fraud, for using Social Security numbers and financial data bought from the identity theft service Superget.info to file at least 179 fraudulent IRS tax refund requests in the names of more than 175 U.S. citizens. Ealy, who represented himself through an 11-day trial with more than 70 witnesses, cut off his electronic monitoring anklet and disappeared before sentencing after a judge released him on a surety bond in October.

Why it matters: The service Ealy bought from, Superget.info, was run by a Vietnamese man who obtained much of the consumer data from data brokers by posing as a U.S. private investigator, and one of those brokers, Court Ventures, was bought by Experian nine months before the government shut the service down - so the stolen identities behind 179 fraudulent refund claims traced back through a credit bureau's own acquisition.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
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