Citizens is a property insurance company that covers Florida homeowners who are unable to get private property insurance. They have over 122,523 customers in Palm Beach, Martin, and St.Lucie counties alone. Citizens intercepted a very interesting data breach. Apparently someone changed their mailing address using the post office online tools to intercept all of their mail, which would include applications and payments from their current and prospective customers.

Citizens discovered the fraud when they received a confirmation of the change of address in the mail. The thieves tried to have that forwarded as well, but the second application for a change of address had not gone through yet so Citizens was able to receive the confirmation before any real damage had been done.

Citizens and the Post Office are confident that no mail had yet been forwarded to the fraudulent address. Citizens is not taking any chances however, they are sending out letters to 213,000 customers and applicants that might have sent a payment or an application during the time in question. The letter instructed customers to call a hotline to ensure their payment had been received, and so far Citizens has not discovered any breaches.

Citizens is most concerned about the insurance applications that might have been sent. The applications would include potential customers date of birth, Social Security number, and address. Everything an identity thief would need to steal someone’s identity.

This tactic is a new one on me! I have never heard of anyone trying and change the address of a business to obtain their customers information. Seems like it might have worked if their second change of address would have gone through before Citizens received the confirmation. Citizens would have figured it out in a couple days when they stopped receiving their mail. I give the identity thief an A for effort, but a F for execution.

A waiter, formerly from Kansas City, Mo., has plead guilty to identity theft and credit card fraud. He has admitted to stealing 20 customer credit cards from the Brio Tuscan Grille in July and August 2008. John David Woody used a card skimmer to record card information from his customer’s cards. John used the card information to make online purchases including thousands of dollars worth of DVDs.

John faces up to 35 years in prison without parole and a fine up to $750,000. Makes you wonder what those waiter and waitresses are doing with your card when they are gone so long with it. If you think about it when you go to a restaurant you never see them swipe your card, because the machine is usually out of sight. They could be doing anything with your card and you wouldn’t be any the wiser. They wouldn’t even need a card skimmer to steal your information they have a notepad and a pen and no one looking over their shoulder wondering what they are writing down.

I tend to worry about the security of my card in situations where I give my card number over the phone or when I give someone my card to someone who is going to walk away with it to compete a transaction. I think I am going to start keeping cash on me so I don’t have to use my check card as much. I feel it’s less likely that someone would rob me than it is for someone to steal my card information and steal from me that way. The more you use cash the fewer card transactions there will be and fewer eyes to see your information.

According to the UC Irving Police 93 UCI graduates and medical students who graduated between 2006 – 2007 have had their identities stolen. Perhaps not in the traditional way but all 93 of them have been informed by the IRS that they have already filed their Tax returns. The identity thieves, whoever they may be, are filing false tax returns in their names and collecting the money.

Filing false tax returns is a crime that doesn’t take money directly out of your pocket but does prevent you front collecting from the government what is yours. According to the IRS the students will eventually receive their tax returns, whoever the bigger problem is who has the information and what else are they going to do with it. With the information needed to file a tax return the criminal could do just about anything including apply for credit cards and opening bank accounts.

Another big question is how did the information get out. The University is working hard to figure that out and is still looking for the solution. There is no sign that the University’s computer systems have been breached, but the University will continue its investigation until it finds answers.

When Darrius Whitehorn was arrested as a robbery suspect last week, he spent a week in jail and became a poster child for criminal identity theft.

Most people think of ID theft as a crime with only financial ramifications, but—though criminal ID theft can also cost big bucks—the damage it wreaks on its victims can be even more serious.

Soon after Whitehorn, 27, was arrested by Chicago police officers they determined he wasn’t involved in the robbery, but they discovered an arrest warrant with his name, birth date and the Social Security number for a separate robbery in Hammond, Indiana.

Whitehorn and his parents knew there had been a terrible mistake and spent the week begging the police and sheriff’s departments to release their son. They couldn’t explain the warrant in their son’s name, but knew their son—a criminal justice student at Loyola University– wasn’t a criminal.

A week later the police were able to provide the explanation: Kirk Davis, a convicted robber and a friend of Whitehorn’s older brother, had usurped Whitehorn’s identity. Fingerprint evidence and a photo lineup linked Davis to another robbery committed in Hammond in February of last year, and cleared Whitehorn of the crime. Davis died in October.

“I would not wish this on my worst enemy,” Whitehorn said. “In class, they tell you that you’re innocent until proven guilty. But I felt I was guilty until proven innocent.”

Whitehorn missed a week of work and the first day of classes while he was in lock up, and his mother took a week off work to fight for her son’s freedom.

“I didn’t want to go back to work until he was out of this hellhole,” his mother, Marie Latham said.

The Identity Theft Resource Center released their sixth annual retrospective report on ID theft this week, “Identity Theft: The Aftermath 2008.”

This year’s report provides a lot of pertinent information lacking in previous years’ reporting. For instance, this year’s report broke 0ut subcategories for loans taken out by identity thieves, revealing that the most common type of loan taken out was mortgages or second mortgages (33%).

This most recent report also provides new information about medical identity theft and how victims discovered the theft. In nearly all cases, victims discovered the thefts when they received bills or calls from bill collectors for medical services they never received. More alarming, though, is that 33% discovered the crime when they found out there was someone else’s medical information in their records.

The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) estimated last year that in every schoolroom there is at least one child victim of identity theft. Sadly, the crime probably won’t be discovered for many years, and the younger the victim, the longer the crime will go undetected, which explains why 17% of child identity theft crimes begin before the victim is even a year old. The perpetrators of child identity theft are most often children’s parents, stepparents or other family members.

In light of the new information in the ITRC report, you owe it to yourself and your family to learn more about how LifeLock protects their members. Visit LifeLock.com for more information. When you’re ready to enroll, use the LifeLock promo code DEFENSE and to get the absolute lowest price available.

Cars, furniture, a motorcycle and a personal watercraft were among the fraudulently-purchased big-ticket goodies Riverside, Cal. police found when they busted Miriam Macedo.

Macedo had apparently been living large until the day she drove her fraudulently-purchased, $40,000 2008 Chevy Tahoe to a Riverside motorsports dealership, and tried to fraudulently purchase two Sea-Doo watercrafts with fraudulent identification. A dealership sales associate spotted the ID for what it was and called the cops.

That’s when Macedo’s fraudulently-funded, identity theft-enriched life came to an end.

Police officers discovered that Macedo was carrying three other people’s identification, including their credit reports and fake California driver’s licenses. She had even more driver’s licenses bearing different men’s names but the same man’s picture.

The officers searched the fraudulently-financed Tahoe and found envelopes stuffed with credit card applications made out under the names printed on the fake driver’s licenses, and a receipt for $6,000 worth of new fraudulently-purchased furniture from Ashley Home Store. The receipt showed the furniture had been fraudulently financed under one of the men’s names and delivered to Macedo’s address in Moreno Valley.

Police found more loot before they even got inside the Macedo’s house: in the driveway was a fraudulently-purchased 2008 Nissan Altima, and a fraudulently-purchased Waverunner; in the garage sat a brand new, fraudulently-purchased Yamaha motorcycle. All three vehicles were registered to one of the fraudulent names.

It comes as no big surprise, but Macedo’s house was nicely furnished with $6,000 worth of fraudulently-purchased furniture from Ashley Home Store.

Having to move to a nursing home, or having to place a loved one in a nursing home, is surely one of the hardest things anyone can go through. No matter how well we research, how clean the place seems, or how nice the staff seems to be, it’s the horror stories we’ve all heard that keep us awake at night.

I hate to do it, but here’s another of those horror stories. Tamara Smith, a certified nursing assistant who worked in several Savannah, GA area nursing homes, has been charged with stealing the identities of more than 40 of the nursing home residents that she was supposed to be caring for.

She used that information to open credit card accounts, and to buy computers and cell phones.

Smith’s victims were as young as 60 and as old as 100. Along with the 43 identity theft charges against her, Smith will also receive an elder abuse charge for each victim over 65. More than half of her victims are, or were, residents at Tara Nursing Home in Thunderbolt, GA.

Irene Pennington, Thunderbolt police chief said they’re still investigating the identity thefts, and expect to discover more victims. She also said they expect to arrest others suspected of being involved in the crimes.

LifeLock provides identity theft protection to nearly 1.5 million people in the United States. Visit LifeLock.com to learn more about their innovative and comprehensive services. Enroll using the LifeLock promotional code Defense to receive a huge discount.

Edward Anderton was “Clyde” to Jocelyn Kirsch’s “Bonnie.” He was her lover, her traveling companion and her partner in crime. And, before the new year is rung in, Anderton will be living in federal prison, just like Kirsch.

Anderton was sentenced last week to serve four years in federal prison for his part in the identity theft scam that netted roughly $120,000 for the pair. Kirsch received a prison sentence of five years last month.

Just like the criminal pair of the1930s captured the imagination of the nation, Kirsch and Anderton gained notoriety for stealing the identities of 50 friends, neighbors and coworkers. Photos of the two enjoying the fruits of their labors were viewed by millions on the Internet: here’s a photo of them kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower; here’s another of them on a beach in the Caribbean.

They broke into their victims’ mailboxes and burglarized their homes to finance those trips. When police searched their luxurious Philadelphia condo they found $18,000 in cash, dozens of fraudulent drivers’ licenses and credit cards, a lock-picking tool, software used in identity theft crimes and a machine for printing identification cards.

The original Bonnie and Clyde came from lives of poverty and committed their crimes in the Great Depression-era dustbowl of the central United States. Anderton was an up and coming financial analyst with an Ivy League education. Kirsch was a student at Drexel, a plastic surgeon’s daughter whose breasts and nose were “done” as gifts from her dad.

Ironically, Anderton and Kirsch had lives of privilege and fortune before their crime spree, and will now have to spend years in poverty. At his sentencing, Anderton was given 45 days to surrender to a federal prison, allowing him to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family, but forcing him to begin 2009 as a prison inmate. Kirsch was immediately remanded to a federal prison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma—the center of the Dustbowl where Bonnie and Clyde committed their crimes.

If you’re curious about whether you’re vulnerable to identity theft, try this simple experiment: Hold a mirror about two inches from your mouth. With your mouth open, exhale normally. Did the mirror fog? If so, you’re at risk.

Checking your credit report will alert you—after the fact—to fraudulent use of your existing accounts, or the establishment of any new accounts in your name. Checking your credit report regularly won’t prevent identity theft, but it will limit the damage done to your credit.

There’s more to worry about than your credit

What about identity theft that doesn’t show up on your credit report? What if someone else uses your identity when they have a run in with the law? (more…)