A Life or Death Case of Identity Theft?
Summary: Identity thieves impersonated James and MaryLou Schwartz at a Florida premium authorized Verizon dealer on Feb. 19, 2016, paying a $150 cash deposit to upgrade the couple's phones to iPhone 6s devices with the balance charged to the victims' account. When Mr. Schwartz suffered a heart attack the next day, MaryLou's phone had been shut off and it took her roughly forty minutes to retrieve his working phone with a mechanical arm, a delay a lawsuit filed in Beaver County, Penn. alleges proved fatal.
Bottom line: The scheme is not rare: FTC figures cited in the article show mobile phone account theft reports rose from 1,038 in January 2013 (3.2% of identity theft reports) to 2,658 in January 2016 (6.3%), and the FTC's own chief technologist, Lorrie Cranor, was hit this summer by a thief using a fake ID with her name and the impostor's photo.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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